


rise from the ashes and do it again (and do it again)

by masulevin



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arguing, Because of the Bliss, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, Making Out, Making Up, Nightmares, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Psychological Torture, Recreational Drug Use, Romantic Gestures, Slow Burn, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, background Staci Pratt/Original Male Character, because of Jacob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:56:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 91,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21578725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masulevin/pseuds/masulevin
Summary: Something has gone very wrong in Hope County. The cult's taken over and Mattie can't seem to stay dead, no matter how hard she tries.
Relationships: Sharky Boshaw/ Female Deputy | Judge
Comments: 114
Kudos: 89





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I said I'd publish this before Thanksgiving, and here we are! The time loop au!
> 
> I'll update tags as I go, but I got the big ones here already. I have nearly seven chapters written and I think there will be twelve total.

Mattie’s shaking almost too hard to hold the rifle Burke thrust into her hands. She didn’t join the sheriff’s department looking for this much excitement, just a way to get out of Idaho and do some good in the world. So what if most of the “good” she’s done so far has been writing traffic tickets and, once, actually getting a cat out of a tree? It’s still better than this, praying wildly that the ammo the cultists are using won’t make it through the flimsy wall of the trailer and into her flesh, trying to cover Burke as he makes a mad dash for a nearby pickup.

She’s shot more people in the last five minutes than she thought she’d ever hurt in her entire life. She hasn’t even had to use her service pistol since joining the department. 

Burke’s triumphant yell when he gets the truck moving is enough to spur her straight through the window, running around the corner while her feet slip in the churned up mud around the trailer. Bullets still spray around her, hitting the trailer and the trees but missing her like her prayers were actually answered for once, and she’s safe from them.

She can’t hear what Burke is saying, but she knows he’s talking. She leans out of the window and shoots at their pursuers, crying out in pain as Burke swerves to the side and flies down a dirt road fast enough to bruise her ribs where she repeatedly slams against the truck door. 

_Fuck, fuck, fuck._

She’s so focused on the trucks behind her that she doesn’t notice the one pulling in front of them from another dirt road on Burke’s side. He screams and fires with his pistol, and she turns around just in time to see the truck as it slams into theirs. Her head hits the truck door and she drops her rife. Something small and metal hits her in the leg, and she only has time to stare at it before the grenade explodes.

_White. Black. Red. White._

_Pain, burning, stinging._

_White. Black. Red._

_Do it again._

_White._

She’s leaning out of the window and shooting at their pursuers, crying out in pain as Burke swerves to the side and flies down a dirt road fast enough to bruise her ribs where she repeatedly slams against the truck door.

“Fuck!” 

She’s so focused on the trucks behind her that she doesn’t notice -- she doesn’t notice -- 

She turns around. There’s a truck pulling in front of them from another dirt road on Burke’s side. It slams into them, and she jerks back, narrowly avoiding slamming her head into the door. Something small and metal hits her leg, and she scoops it up and tosses it out her window toward the truck behind them.

Burke cheers as the other truck explodes.

They continue.

The bridge collapses and the truck falls and she can’t get her seatbelt undone fast enough. Her vision is turning red around the edges as she watches Burke swim away, leaving her behind. Finally, finally, the catch releases and she kicks herself free, heading for the light, not enough breath in her lungs to care about being caught by a peggie when the other option is drowning.

She doesn’t even fight when one lifts her and slings her over his shoulder. She just sleeps.

\---

The man who pulled her from the icy lake isn’t a peggie, just a doomsday prepper unaffiliated with the cult. This may not be the doomsday he was anticipating, but his supplies are helping him nonetheless. They help her too, as she dresses in some other woman’s clothes, straps his 1911 to her hip, his knife to her thigh. A waterproof backpack holds other supplies like extra ammo and bottles of water, and then she’s out on her own again.

She doesn’t think about the weird _Final Destination_ moment from the truck ride. She just wants to get to Missoula, to call the National Guard like they obviously should’ve in the first place, US Marshals be damned. 

Fuck. The peggies have Burke. They have Whitehorse and Pratt and Hudson.

Fucking Nancy.

She doesn’t think about how she saw the grenade explode inside their truck, killing them both. She doesn’t think about how she saw the grenade, again, a second time, fly through their open window and then back out the other one to explode somewhere else.

She doesn’t.

She _doesn’t._

She snaps a man’s neck with her bare hands. She doesn’t even hesitate, instinct and adrenaline flowing through her as he starts to spot her hiding in the brush outside the ranger station. He falls at her feet with a thud, and she stares into his glassy eyes for endless seconds before she has to turn and vomit into the dirt, losing the water and jerky Dutch shared with her.

Is this self defense? She doesn’t think so.

She retches again, a dry heave that makes her eyes water, then she’s moving. She doesn’t kill with her bare hands again, but three more men hit the dirt before she’s done. 

She releases a hostage, slicing the ropes that held his wrists together, and he gives her more water in thanks. It’s all he can spare.

When Dutch is satisfied and his radio is working again, she swims across the river and emerges, shivering, onto the opposite bank. She frees another prisoner and they take out two more cultists. Their blood splashes across her shirt, and she ignores it. 

There’s a dock near the Silver Lake trailer park, and sometimes there’s a seaplane there. She tells the man she rescued to go somewhere safe and heads in that direction, creeping through the underbrush in a way that would have made her father proud if he’d spoken to her sometime in the last five years.

The plane is waiting for her next to a dead body bleeding on the dock. The key is near the man’s lifeless fingers, and she doesn’t look him in the face as she scoops it up. She doesn’t want to know if she recognizes him.

She tries to remember what Staci told her about flying, tries to remember the flight simulator he’d made her try, the excited ramblings he’d been prone to once he realized she wouldn’t tell him to shut up once he started on the subject like Joey always did.

The engine stalls twice, but then the motor is running and the propellers are spinning and she’s in the air with the river getting smaller and smaller behind her.

She hates heights.

She doesn’t actually know how to fly.

The plane’s radio remains damningly silent as she banks and heads towards the mountains northeast of the county, aiming for MIssoula. She doesn’t know how she’ll land, but as soon as she sees a lake in any other county, she can at least try to get help without crashing.

Maybe she’ll go to prison too, but that’s better than being dead.

Isn’t it?

The mountains steadily grow closer. The radio stays silent. She begins to shake, hands unsteady against the throttle. She’s so close.

She’s so close.

She’s… facing southwest, toward Fall's End. She can see a few vague columns of smoke in front of her as the plane starts to sputter and the engine dies.

_White. Black. No red this time, no stinging pain, just a sickly green and the sharp spinning of vertigo. White. Black._

_Do it again. Do it better. Focus._

_There’s no escape._

_White._

She’s standing on the dock, the airplane key clutched in her hand. She’s holding it so tightly it’s leaving deep indents in her skin -- any sharper and it would draw blood. The plane is still parked just a few feet from her, and when she forces herself to touch it, the metal is the same temperature as the summer air. No heat from a running engine or chill from the mountains.

What the fuck.

“What is happening to me?”

\---

She can’t decide if she wants to keep track of how many peggies she kills, maybe collect their drivers licenses or something so, when all this is over, they can identify the bodies. Let their families know what exactly happened.

She doesn’t collect licenses, and she loses track of how many people surprise her and earn bullets or punches for their trouble.

She finds Boomer, a sweet blue heeler she’s met once or twice before, and he seems to decide that she’s his new person who can’t be left alone at any cost. It’s nice, in a way, having someone around her. He’s definitely watching her back, and his good ears let her know when there are cult members nearby. It keeps her from being snuck up on more than once. 

They find a car on the side of the road, doors open, battery dinging. It’s not running, but the keys are in the ignition, and a smear of blood on the driver’s seat and on the pavement nearby let her know what happened here.

She doesn’t take the time to mourn the lost life or look for the missing person. Boomer doesn’t act like he can hear anyone, and that’s good enough for her, now, after everything. She coaxes the dog into the car, rolls the windows down for him, and heads to Fall's End.

The car rolls to a stop without her deciding to let it. She just… forgets to keep putting pressure on the gas pedal. Boomer sits at alert in the passenger seat, leaning his head out the window to smell what’s going on around him.

She can smell it, too. It looks like the world is ending. Whole buildings have been destroyed, burned down and still smoking. Fires are raging deeper in the town, and she feels acid churning in her gut.

The first time she came to Fall's End, it had been beautiful. It was late spring, the trees were all green and flowers were everywhere. The house that’s currently a burning pit to her left had been freshly painted a beautiful blue. She knew she wanted to stay and make it her home even before her interview at the jail because of how it felt, even though she had to stop and get Claritin on the way home from all the pollen.

Farther down the street she can see the tree she’d climbed to save a cat her third week on the job, Staci snickering and recording the whole thing on his phone to show Joey later. It has a car wrapped around its trunk.

She’s going to kill every fucking peggie in the county.

She shuts the car off and leaves it in the street, Boomer chasing after her as she stalks down the double yellow lines toward the Spread Eagle. She draws her pistol as she moves, holding it carefully in front of her. 

She can’t hear anyone.

That, in of itself, should have been a warning. It’s not like a lot of people live in Fall's End proper, but it’s the area of the county with the most stores and hangouts close together now that the 8-Bit’s closed. She advances slowly, head cocked to the side like that’ll help her hear better, and Boomer takes off running to the east. She glances after him, and it’s in that half-second of distraction that she finally hears something to her other side.

She turns just in time to see the peggie pull the trigger, just in time to hear the sharp _pop_ of a weapon with a silencer, and then she falls.

_White. Black. Red. Pain. She’s never been shot before, but this must be what it feels like. The peggie got her right in the chest, a clean shot that probably tore right through her heart, ruining her shirt and…_

_Well… does it matter if her shirt’s ruined if she’s not alive to wear it?_

_God, this hurts. Is it real this time?_

_Is it real?_

_WhIte._

The car rolls to a stop without her deciding to let it. She just… forgets to keep putting pressure on the gas pedal. Boomer sits at alert in the passenger seat, leaning his head out the window to smell what’s going on around him.

She blinks once, and two fat tears roll down her cheeks. She inhales sharply and turns off the engine, clutching the keys in her hand. There’s a little alien on the keyring, and she hisses as she tries to catch her breath. 

Boomer looks over at her, then shifts to lick at her tears. His breath is atrocious, and she laughs, high-pitched and hysterical. He wines, and she scratches his neck under the weird rope collar he’s still wearing. 

This is okay.

This is okay.

This time, she keeps her head low as she walks, cutting across the street to sneak behind some of the still-standing houses where the last peggie came from. She spots him walking a slow patrol, and when Boomer growls at her side she notices a few more peggies up the street, just standing by some parked cars.

Illegally parked cars, she realizes, but she doesn’t care. What are parking tickets at the end of the world?

She’s still shaking when the peggie she’s tracking wanders close enough to her hiding place, but she still pops up out of the tall grass and wraps him in a chokehold, ignoring the elbow she takes to her ribs and the scratches he leaves on her forearms. 

He’s strong, but she’s furious, running on adrenaline and little else.

When he falls unconscious, she drops them to their knees and keeps the pressure up for a few more seconds before dumping his body in the dirt. She doesn’t check his pulse, just leaves him there and sneaks behind the buildings.

There’s a man on top of the general store that she can’t do anything about with her pistol, and the little group of peggies has too many people in it for her to take down on her own, even with Boomer willing to act as a distraction by trying to tear out a throat or two. She doesn’t want him to get shot.

He doesn’t deserve to be hurt by the decisions of the humans around him. He’s a good boy.

She tells him as much, and his tongue lolls out of his mouth in a little dog smile. She scratches behind his ear, and then he runs off, and she hopes he’ll be okay.

She’s too busy trying to see where he’s going to realize one of the peggies has gotten close to the body she left in the grass. He yells out a warning, something about a sinner, and she hits the ground to army crawl out of his line of sight.

After that, it’s chaos. The peggies are on high alert, shooting at (hopefully) nothing, though she can hear the high-pitched, furious screams of a woman nearby. The sound makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and she starts heading that way while still staying as hidden as she can. 

She peeks around a corner to see Mary May on her knees, hands bound with zip ties behind her back, lips still parted on a scream.

Christ. Mary May’s younger than Mattie, even younger than Staci, and even though the distance isn’t all that big, it still fills Mattie with a protective rage that has less to do with being a deputy and more to do with seeing a younger woman in that kind of trouble.

She manages to shoot one of the peggies standing by Mary May, getting him right in the eye, and he falls with a heavy thud. Mary May stops screaming, holds her breath, and carefully doesn’t look over her shoulder where the shot probably came from. 

She always was smart.

The other peggie turns, rifle raised, and Mattie shoots him too. This time she just gets him in the arm, and he has time to shoot back before she can dodge out of the way.

_White. Black. Red. Pain._

_Not again. I can’t do this again._

_Please._

_White._

The car rolls to a stop without her deciding to let it. She just… forgets to keep putting pressure on the gas pedal. Boomer sits at alert in the passenger seat, leaning his head out the window to smell what’s going on around him.

She blinks once, and two fat tears roll down her cheeks. Then she punches the steering wheel again and again and again and her knuckles bleed and she wants to scream but she doesn’t want to give away her position and get Mary May killed.

Boomer whines next to her. He could jump out of the window, but he’s not scared enough for that. He’s just worried. As soon as she stops flailing, he’s pressing his wet nose against her cheek and licking up her tears.

“Is this happening to you, too?” He licks her face again and doesn’t answer. 

She allows herself a few more seconds to wallow, then another few to steel her resolve, then she’s out of the car and heading to the opposite side of the street, the side with the general store. She sneaks, Boomer sneaks, and then she’s able to climb a ladder up the back and sneak up on the peggie on the roof.

She snaps his neck and he doesn’t make a sound.

She doesn’t throw up, just calmly picks up his sniper rifle and gets herself into position. It takes her a few seconds to get used to looking through the scope, another few seconds to figure out the best way to take down the peggies she can see, then she starts picking them off one by one.

Mary May screams until the bodies start falling, then just holds herself still and quiet, head down. Mattie gets to her as fast as she can, slinging the sniper rifle over her shoulder so she can take it with her. It came in handy once, and something awful inside her says it’s going to come in handy again.

She cuts Mary May free with the knife Dutch gave her, then helps her stand up. Mary May thanks her with a hug, then runs off toward the church.

There are more peggies there, trapping Father Jerome inside. Mattie’s spoken to him on a few occasions, but she’s never attended any services. She hasn’t been to church since she moved away from home, and she’s not intending to start again now.

Mattie just manages to forget the bigger picture here, that a cult has taken complete control of the county, that the roads have been closed and something’s wrong with everything else so that she can’t fly away and can’t even fucking die, until someone yells that air support has been called in and there’s a goddamn airplane shooting at her from the sky.

She’s going to die. She’s going to die and she’s going to have to do this again and she can’t keep killing the same peggies over and over she _can’t she can’t she can’t_

Jerome manages to shoot out one of the plane’s engines, and it crashes right next to the Spread Eagle. 

He finds Mattie where she’s shaking and half-hiding behind the church sign, and he looks way more concerned about her than he should be. She came to rescue him, but he’s just coaxing her out into the open with a soft smile. He’s wearing a bulletproof vest over his shirt and collar, and Mattie doesn’t even care why he already had it. She just wants to know if she can get one too.

With Fall's End free of the peggies, people start crawling out from their hiding places and heading to the miraculously still-standing Spread Eagle. Even Jerome comes, helping Mary May set things back up and lightly teasing her about having liquor hidden after Eden’s Gate tried to get rid of all of it. 

Mattie sits at the bar in silence, and Mary May gives her a beer on the house. Boomer is still somewhere outside, hopefully not getting into trouble, but he’s definitely not allowed indoors when he’s covered in mud and human gore.

“You doin’ okay, Deputy?” Mary May is leaning on the other side of the bar, and it looks like she’s comfortable, so as far as Mattie knows she’s been standing there for several seconds waiting to be acknowledged and Mattie just… hasn’t noticed, too wrapped up in her own thoughts.

“Oh,” she says, then clears her throat and tries again. “I’m okay, Mary May, thank you. Are _you_ okay?”

“I’ve been better,” she says, and she smiles a little sadly. Mattie grimaces and nods. “I knew those peggie sons of bitches were up to no good. I _warned_ you.”

And, yeah, she had. She warned them a lot. She warned them so much that Whitehorse had gotten tired of her, the other deputies making jokes about it. Mattie carefully doesn’t think about it.

“You were right,” Mattie says instead. “We should’ve listened.”

“Yeah, you should’ve.” She’s angry, and that’s fine. Mattie just waits as she collects herself before speaking again. “But you’re going to make things right, aren’t you?”

Mattie can’t do anything but nod at the younger woman, pinned into place on the bar stool with the weight of her gaze. 

Yeah. Yeah, she’s going to make it right.

She takes her beer with her when she finally leaves, walking down the sidewalk toward Jerome’s church. Someone’s already moved the bodies out of the way, and she’s happy she doesn’t have to look at them any more. 

Jerome is sitting in the center of the sanctuary when she hesitates at the open door, now not sure she should have brought her drink with her. Is that even allowed here? The Baptist church she’d been raised in hadn’t believed in drinking, but Catholics are okay with it, right? But inside their own church?

Jerome waves her in regardless. She sits on the front pew and listens as he reads a bit from his notebook, feeling like she’s in some sort of small group Bible study that lost some of its members. She holds her beer in her hands but doesn’t drink from it. Jerome doesn’t say anything about it, doesn’t even look at it, but it still feels wrong somehow.

She doesn’t miss the concern in his eyes when he asks, “How are you holding up?”

She hesitates. Should she tell him? Should she tell him she’s died four times already and she’s still sitting in front of him? That she’s felt the pain of being shot and ripped limb from limb? That she’s not sure she’s actually alive right now and not dreaming all this?

She breaks her own unspoken rule and finishes her beer before she answers. He doesn’t look more annoyed or less concerned when she meets his gaze again, so she figures she didn’t fuck up too badly.

“I’m hanging on,” she says. He lifts one eyebrow and waits. She knows he wants more information from her, and she doesn’t feel up to fighting it. “It’s just… I was an EMT before, you know? I never signed up to kill people.”

He nods. “You never really get used to it, but it does get easier.”

“They have my friends,” she says. “I have to stop them.”

He nods again, a small smile playing on his face. It feels comforting, somehow, despite everything going on around them, the bullet holes from some peggie’s AR-15 in the wall behind him. “We’ll help you,” he says. “As much as we can.”

And that… that’ll just have to be good enough.

He lets her sleep in the little parsonage behind the church, on the couch in his living room. She doesn’t dream, doesn’t cry.

She just sleeps.

\---

Not being able to die is making Mattie reckless. She’s died no fewer than 27 times; she’s taken to making little tick marks on the inside of her forearm with a stolen sharpie every time she’s shocked back into place a few minutes before her last mistake.

She still doesn’t know why. 

No one else has mentioned it, not even the peggie she had to kill three times in a row because something else kept fucking her up on her way into one of the cult’s outposts in the valley. The restarts help her plan better (usually) but the peggies don’t seem to be getting the same advantage.

Whatever’s happening here only seems to work for her.

She’s rigging little homemade bombs to take out John’s silos, ugly red things with the Eden’s Gate cross painted in white, eyesores she’s hated for months; she’s gunning down cultists who aren’t even pretending not to be tying up civilians on the side of the road; she ran three over with her little car before she had to give up on it running again.

Apparently dead peggie is bad for engines. Who knew?

She’s just about to finish clearing out a peggie outpost for the resistance when she hears John’s voice click on over her radio. She’s been ignoring him, ignoring his occasional attempts to contact her, mostly because everything he says is a barely disguised manic sermon, but this time…

His people are coming to get her?

She takes out the last two peggies with her sniper rifle, the same one she lifted from the peggie in Fall's End now improved with a suppressor, and she radios Jerome to let him know Kellett’s place is ready for his people to move in -- John will be able to hear it, but he won’t be able to do anything about it fast enough to stop her -- and then she’s jogging off to the nearest copse of trees.

There’s no point in staying behind, especially if John’s people are going to start looking at their lost outpost for her.

Her (borrowed) ATV is parked there, Boomer sleeping beside it with his legs all up in the air. He perks up when he hears her footsteps, rolling over and jumping up to greet her with his front paws on her chest.

“Who’s my good boy?” she greets, accepting his kiss with only a small grimace, wiping away the slobber when he thinks she’s been properly groomed. He’s fully accepted his role as her right-hand dog, and he takes it seriously.

She doesn’t hear anything, and Boomer doesn’t act like anyone’s nearby. She doesn’t linger before climbing on the ATV and only slightly grimacing at the sound of the engine roaring to life. Boomer takes off ahead of her, ready to scout.

She wouldn’t have heard John’s men approaching her if they hadn’t announced their presence over the wrong radio channel, coming through her speaker tinny and quiet: “Use the bliss bullets!”

She has exactly enough time to ask the open air, “What the fuck are bliss bullets?” before she gets her answer in the form of a sharp pain to her right arm.

The world goes shiny and distorted, and she crashes her ATV into a tree.

\---

She doesn’t realize she’s under water at first. Everything’s blurry and distorted, bright spots of light still floating around, the hands on her shoulders barely registering. It’s not until she’s brought to the surface that she realizes she couldn’t breathe before, that a peggie is staring at her with an unreadable expression.

Is he angry with her, and that’s why he’s drowning her? Is he happy that he pulled her out of the water in time to save her?

Why is the world spinning like she’s seven drinks in and about to be sick?

The peggie tries to draw her forward, but he’s stopped by another man, a man who looks familiar with his white book and unbuttoned shirt and combed-back hair.

_John Seed._

“Not this one,” he says, and if she had any energy left to care about what happens to her, she’d be afraid. But she doesn’t. He passes his book off to her peggie and adds, “This one’s not clean.”

She’s under water again before she realizes it, and since she _knows_ she’s under water, it’s worse. It’s so much worse. It burns, panic lacing through her despite the calm of just moments ago, and she scratches at his arms before she remembers. She _remembers._

She’s laughing when he draws her back up, her hands on his wrists. She’s freezing, water dripping into her eyes, lights dancing around John’s face. She laughs and she laughs and she laughs, head tipped back, nails scraping gouges into his skin.

“Ahh, tsk,” he says, eyebrows drawing together at her laughter.

“You can’t kill me,” she says, still laughing, and his fingers tighten on her arms. There’s a dull spike of pain in one arm where she was shot, but she’s still too blissed-out to care. “I’m a _fucking god._ ”

He doesn’t like that. His face contorts into a snarl and he drops her into the river, and she’s still laughing when she hits the water. His hands find her throat and hold her down, hold her under the water until she doesn’t know if she’ll drown or strangle.

He pulls her back up at the last minute. She’s still laughing at him, sputtering water back in his face. He clucks his tongue again, shushes her laughter, and starts to lower her again when he freezes, expression changing from anger to fear and then… nothing in an instant.

Joseph is here.

Now, _he’s_ holding her at arms length, hands on her shoulders, that spike of pain back under everything else. The lights seem to spin faster now. “Despite all that you have done, you are not beyond salvation. You’re not here by accident, by chance. You are here by the grace of God. You’ve been given a gift. Now it remains to be seen whether you choose to embrace it… or to cast it aside.”

Is the gift the forced baptism? She was baptised already when she was eight, in the lake by her daddy’s house. She hadn’t almost drowned then. She hadn’t been shot or drugged. She’d just been desperate to be good, to feel the love of her father the same way her older brothers seemed to.

It’s not until Joseph releases her to turn to his brother that she realizes the gift might be her inability to fucking _stay dead_.

“This one shall reach Atonement. Or the Gates of Eden shall be shut to you, John.”

Their foreheads touch. It looks to her like John’s a sad puppy, the littlest brother desperate for love. “Yes, Joseph.” The sadness is replaced with simmering rage when he looks back at her, and the drug-addled sympathy drains away when he grabs her again. “You will confess. Every sin you’ve ever committed, no matter how petty, no matter how small, I will pull from you. Then we’ll see if you’re worthy of Atonement.”

She bares her teeth in a snarl wonders how much pressure she’d need to exert to tear out his throat, but he scoffs and pushes her away. The other peggie catches her and leads her to a waiting van, exactly the kind she’s sprung prisoners from before.

Super.

Super duper.

She briefly considers adding more blasphemy to her promised confession, but the world goes black before she can.

\--

Jerome is still radioing her assignments when she finally makes it back to the Silver Lake trailer park. There are a few peggies holding up a few normal people -- but that’s not unusual. She ignores Jerome and takes down the peggies with the weapons she took from their dead brothers and sisters across the county. 

She listens to the pleas of the people she saved, nods like she’s going to do something to help them immediately, and then starts ransacking the nearby trailers for something dry to wear.

Saving the county is all fun and games until she’s trying to decide if she wants to put on a stranger’s clean pair of panties while eating baked beans straight out of the can.

(She ends up taking the panties and several more pairs tucked into the bottom of a bag she finds, followed by an extra set of clothes. She’s pretty sure Jacob won’t try to drown her if he catches her, but better safe than sorry, right?)

(She tries not to think about the person who used to own these clothes.)

“Jerome, I’m laying low for a bit. I’ll let you know when I’m back in the Valley, promise. Over and out.”

The radio crackles once after she signs off, like Jerome wants to argue. He doesn’t say anything, and the line goes quiet. For just a few blissful minutes, she’s alone, the only sounds around her the cicadas in the trees and the quiet sigh of Boomer settling on the couch.

After another moment of hesitation, she flops onto the couch next to the dog, tucks her feet up under her, and falls asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

She hasn’t spent any significant time in the Whitetails since moving to Hope County. The area is --  _ was  _ \-- mostly controlled by a handful of park rangers with the deputies only called in for the occasional problem too big for the rangers to handle, and Mattie hadn’t had enough time off to make camping in the mountains worth it.

It is beautiful, though. If she hadn’t been walking through the woods on the side of the road in someone else’s shoes, she’d be happy to be up here, maybe looking forward to a three-day weekend to relax after a hard few weeks at work.

Now she’s had a hard week and no rest in sight. She’s had the  _ hardest  _ week and no rest in sight, the evening she spent passed out in the abandoned trailer notwithstanding.

She and Boomer fall back into their habits from Holland Valley, sneaking through the trees that line the road and hiding from pickups carrying a handful of peggies to whatever peggie business they have to get up to, mostly staying out of trouble even after stealing another little car that had been left abandoned on the side of the winding mountain road.

When hunger makes itself known and jerky and old granola bars won’t cut it, she stops at the dock to poke around. She finds a fishing pole, like she hoped she would, and spends a couple hours fishing from the end of the pier with Boomer sleeping at her feet. It’s almost peaceful, if she ignores the occasional helicopter flying overhead and the occasional fast  _ pop pop pop  _ of automatic gunfire from deeper in the mountains.

She catches two salmon and cooks them over a fire, eating one and giving the second to Boomer when she can’t finish it. She curls up inside the boathouse and falls asleep to the gentle lapping of the water and Boomer’s heat against her back.

When she wakes with a pain low in her belly, she’s afraid for half a second she’s given herself food poisoning until she remembers how long it’s been since the last time she woke up with pain low in her belly (29 days, maybe 28, the dying has made it a little confusing) and then she’s sneaking to the closest gas station to see if she can loot any Tampax, guilt at taking from dead shop owners long forgotten.

Dutch passes along a mayday from the FANG Center while she’s drinking a warm Gatorade and waiting for her stolen Advil to kick in, a message from a man she hasn’t met because she never bothered to go see the local attraction, and she heads that way as directly as she dares. Boomer seems excited by the direction they’re going, sniffing the ground with his tail going fast enough to blur.

Boomer hears it first, head tilting first to one side then the other in adorable canine confusion. After careful consideration, he takes off at speed, leaving Mattie to just curse and follow him, pistol in hand, head low.

She recognizes Staci’s voice before she recognizes his words, and she freezes in place even though none of the peggies are looking even in her general direction, cold horror slithering up her spine and lodging deep, deep in her brain.

_ “I never wanted any of this to happen. I was brought here under false pre-- pretenses and fed lies about Joseph Seed and his family.” _

He stumbles over his words. She’s never, ever heard him sound like that. She’s heard him slurring his words, drunk out of his mind; she’s heard him crying, mourning the loss of a lover; she’s heard him happy and tired and cocky and being a general little shit.

She’s never, ever heard him sound so… broken.

“Oh, Staci.”

She kills every peggie in the FANG Center without a moment of hesitation, without a moment of guilt. She punches a white wolf in the face when it bites her weapon hand, then shoots it between the eyes.

She doesn’t feel bad about that either.

She doesn’t die once.

\---

Boomer and Cheeseburger get along better than she was expecting. They took a minute to sniff each other once the last of Jacob’s men died under their combined efforts, then Boomer licked the bear’s face and they took off running together.

She accepts having a bear as a companion (she can’t think of Cheeseburger as a pet, despite the collar and the way he asks for belly rubs) easier than she would have before Everything Went to Shit, and it’s nice having him around to chase off wild animals and keep her warm as the nights turn cold.

She doesn’t even mind when Dutch radios her again and tells her his niece is in trouble at the lumber mill, just heads over that way as soon as she finishes the rabbit she managed to catch and skin for lunch.

She hasn’t been to the lumber mill either, doesn’t quite judge its location right on her map, and she sees it from the top of a hill to the west. She sits on the rocks and watches through her pilfered binoculars for a while, watching the peggies walking around and listening to some bullshit about culling the herd playing over the speakers.

She’ll have to knock those out first. She’s already tired of his voice.

In the end, she’s happy she has Cheeseburger with her. Almost no one notices her sneaking around to kill the alarms when there’s a fucking bear roaring on the other side of the compound. She only has to snap one guy’s neck and gets two more from farther away with her sniper rifle and then… she’s done, the lumber mill is out of the cult’s hands and she’s able to walk around letting people out of the cages they’d been put in.

People.

In  _ cages _ .

She doesn’t even feel bad for the lives she took. They fucking deserved it.

She wasn’t expecting to round the corner and run right into Jess Black, wasn’t expecting to find such an angry woman staring back at her, wasn’t expecting to suddenly find herself tongue tied and in the middle of what her college friends had called  _ gay panic,  _ but she did and she is and that’s the only thing she actually feels guilty about, especially when Jess starts explaining about the Cook and delves right into a thinly veiled story about her own life.

Mattie decides not to ask Jess about the scars, just follows her silently through the Whitetails, killing peggies and liberating normal people who should never have been put through what they’ve been put through. She tries not to show it outwardly, but Jess’ description of how human meat smells like pork makes her stomach turn.

She silently resolves never to eat pork again.

She doesn’t feel bad for killing the Cook, not even when Cheeseburger rushes in at the last minute and bites the man’s throat out.

Man? He’s a  _ monster _ . He’s as much of a monster as Joseph and his siblings.

Jess looks miserable when she says, “I thought I’d feel  _ better.  _ Dutch was right.”

Mattie’s instinct is to reach out a comforting hand, it always has been, even when she was little. Joey and Staci had teased her relentlessly about her need for human contact, how she was always in their personal space, but when she took their words to heart and tried to hold back… they’d complained. They liked it.

Jess doesn’t. She steps away, offers to help fight back against Jacob whenever Mattie needs her, then… she leaves.

As soon as Mattie’s alone, an unfamiliar voice crackles over her radio. 

“There's someone out there pretending to be a soldier. They are killing our brothers and sisters and putting this project in jeopardy _. _ ”

Mattie stares up at the paint on the exposed side of the mountain that says SACRIFICE THE WEAK and makes a face. She wonders if Jacob can see her, if he waited for her to be alone specifically to harass her with his unique brand of Seed bullshit.

“I want this coward to know they have my attention.”

“That’s me,” Mattie mutters, a half smile on her face despite everything. Boomer blinks up at her and lolls is tongue out; she scratches him behind his ear to thank him for laughing at her joke.

“My hunters are coming for you,” Jacob continues, heedless of her interruption. “There's nowhere you can run.”

Her radio clicks as he signs off.

Okay?

She’s still rifling through the pockets of the dead peggies for cash when a sharp pain lances up her leg and she looks down to see a whole-ass arrow sticking out of her thigh. She barely has time to wrap her fingers around the shaft when her vision sparks around the edges and she collapses.

Fuckin’ bliss.

\---

She wakes up again tied to a chair, groggy, nauseated, with pain radiating up from the arrow wound in her leg and the still-healing bite mark on her wrist. Wherever she is absolutely stinks, it smells like piss and sweat, and she’s coughing and gagging before she realizes it.

A cold hand touches her face, briefly, a caress of familiarity that’s gone before she can fully register it. It calms her down though, no threat in it, and she blinks her eyes open to see Staci standing in front of her.

For half a second she thinks he’s untying her, but…

No.

He’s making sure her bonds are secure.

“You shouldn’t have come for me,” he says, and  _ what the fuck  _ does that mean, of course she was going to come for him, was she supposed to let him stay up here by himself? After what she heard at the FANG Center?

His face is bruised and bloody, and part of the smell in the room is coming from him, and she doesn’t really want to cry right now but the residual bliss in her system is making that hard. He looks like he’s been beaten within an inch of his life, and if it wasn’t for the look of absolute sorrow in his eyes, she’d be convinced he fully abandoned the county in favor of the cult.

“You should have run.” He tightens the rope holding her left hand down so much that her fingers start to tingle, blood cut off, and then he looks over her shoulder and scurries away.

The light in the room goes off, something clicks beside her, and there’s a picture of a dead deer on the wall.

Jacob Seed starts in on his bullshit again, about how the world is weak and soft. There are two other people in the room with her, tied to other chairs, staring at the wall as the deer becomes a wolf and Jacob walks into view.

She jerks in her chair like she’ll be able to kill him right now, and… oh, that’s probably why her ropes are so goddamn tight.

Jacob stands in front of the room, looking for all the world like a college professor on the first day of class, and Staci stands on the other side of the screen like the world’s unhappiest TA.

She’s not watching the slides as they click from one photo of wolves to the next (and, okay, fucking slides? A slide projector? Is this the 70s? What the fuck?); instead, she stares at her friend. He stares right back, hands clasped together in front of the belt buckle he was so proud of, shoulders bowed.

She mouths his name. He shakes his head imperceptibly.

Jacob notices anyway and makes his way to her with steady steps, not pausing in his lecture. This is  _ not  _ the first time he’s given this lecture, in this room, in front of this slideshow.

He leans down so his face is level with hers, rests his weight with his hands on the arms of her chair, fingers bruising over her wrists. If he was any closer, she could headbutt him. She’d probably die for it, but at least she’d go down breaking his nose. He doesn’t move closer.

“The Collapse is upon us,” he says, and he says it just like that, like the C should be capitalized, like it’s the name of an event that will change the whole world. “And this time, the lives of the few outweigh the lives of the many.” She tries to kick at him, an aborted movement that lets her know her ankles are tied up too. His eyebrow quirks in what might be amusement, but it doesn’t break his concentration. “And when a nation that’s never known hunger or desperation descends into madness… we’ll be ready.”

Fuck him and his high horse. God damn fucking fuckface.

There must still be bliss in his system, or she’d be saying all this outloud. Consequences be damned.

Jacob stands and picks something up, winding it up in his hands. “We will cull the herd. We will do what needs to be done.”

He opens what turns out to be a music box and she fucking loses it. It  _ hurts.  _ It hurts more than the arrow and more than the bite and she howls with it, her head splitting apart. She loses Staci, she loses Jacob, she loses her own goddamn self.

_ What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the f _

She’d prefer falling into the painful black-white-red that comes after she dies than  _ this _ , that same song playing, Jacob’s voice crooning in her ear every time she clears a room, killing militia member after militia member in an attempt to escape the hotel.

Why are they attacking her?

_ Is that Pratt’s voice saying cull the herd I’m gonna fucking cull him what the fuck what the fuck what th _

\---

She’s still tied to the chair when she wakes up, but she’s tipped over on her side like she’s fallen over. There are two other bodies, also tied to chairs, and she wants to call for help but her throat is raw. 

Someone’s checking the bodies. Someone’s checking  _ her  _ body, wholly convinced she’s already dead, and he’s so startled to see her looking back at him that he drops her and her already aching head cracks against the floor again.

She’d swear, but she’s too tired.

She passes out as soon as it’s convenient and lets the men carry her wherever they want.

Who the fuck cares.

\---

She leaves the Wolf’s Den as soon as she’s able to walk around without feeling like she’s going to faint. Jacob didn’t have her in the cage for that long, but she was running on not enough food anyway. The extra couple days of starvation made her feel… awful.

She’s still waking up with Staci’s face behind her eyes but she doesn’t know what she can do about it.

She needs more help.

She turns east as soon as she can, heading back toward the center of the county, maybe towards Faith’s region. She’s heard there are some survivors over at the jail, maybe she can get some of them to help her fight Jacob?

Christ. She needs someone who’s better at strategy than she is.

She’s been an adult for years but she’s still not ready for  _ this. _

She gets a somewhat frantic call on her radio as she gets closer to the eastern edge of Jacob’s region, has to slow her liberated ATV to a stop before she can really make out the words over the staticky line. Once she parses out the message, she almost turns her radio off and keeps heading for the bridge. Dealing with anything coming from Hurk Jr. is going to involve dealing with Hurk  _ Sr.,  _ and she’s not sure she’s emotionally ready to handle the Drubmans today.

Boomer whines, though, panting by her side, and she figures that at least helping Hurk will earn her enough favor to borrow a car, or something. She’s been to the property before, and they have more than enough to spare one.

She scratches Boomer’s ears and adjusts her course, heading for the (very nice) house on the lake. It’s beautiful, too beautiful for someone like Mr. Drubman with his general shittiness to deserve, but she pulls into the drive anyway and steels herself for whatever’s about to happen.

She’s survived this far, right?

\---

Okay, so liberating a modified campaign vehicle wasn’t really what she was expecting, and Mr. Drubman is exactly as awful as she remembers him being, but Hurk is so goddamn cheerful that she can’t bear to tell him to stay behind with his dad. Even his stories of traveling in India are sort of uplifting instead of irritating, and so she drives the campaign car and lets Hurk sit shotgun while Boomer stretches out across the backseat.

There’s a roadblock at the bridge leading from the Whitetails into the Henbane, but there’s enough of a space between two of the trucks that she doesn’t hesitate to push the accelerator to the floor and fly right through it, ignoring the screams and bullets whizzing past them, laughing along with Hurk when he starts cheering.

He tosses a grenade out the window back toward them and whoops from the moment it lands (miraculously) square in the middle of the bed of bliss flowers to the moment it explodes, taking the flowers and the truck and at least one cultist with it.

“That was fuckin’ awesome, I tell you what.” He grins at her as he hauls himself fully inside the car and settles heavily in the passenger seat. “Those assholes deserved it, too, trying to take those fuckin’ flowers over the river.”

Mattie eases off the accelerator when no more peggies appear in front of her, dares to take one hand off the wheel to turn the oldies station on low. “That was a great toss. I might need you to give me lessons; most of the time I throw something, it goes pretty wide.”

“Oh, man, well, mostly it was a lucky shot, I guess,” he says, apparently embarrassed, but when she glances over at him he’s absolutely preening under her compliment. “I can try to help though; we can probably find some baseballs or rocks or somethin’ that are about the right size for you to practice with, when the peggies are leavin’ us alone at least.”

She nods at him and rests her right hand on the gear shift, fingernails tapping to the beat of the music. “I haven’t done anything to Faith yet, so hopefully they won’t know me as well over here. Seemed like I couldn’t get anything done in the Whitetails without tripping over some of Jacob’s Chosen.”

“Sure, sure. You just gotta look out for the bliss fields over--”

Mattie’s radio squawks to life and cuts Hurk off mid-warning, shutting him up almost as effectively as the hand she holds up to silence him.

“ _ It’s Adelaide at the marina, honey, _ ” says the voice, and Hurk lights up with recognition. “ _ The peggies are all over us! I don’t know how long we can keep these sonuvabitches out! _ ”

The transmission clicks off. Mattie and Hurk sit silently, the only sound the low rumble of the engine and the almost too-quiet music coming from the car’s speaker, and then they both burst into action at the same time.

“Holy chimpanzee butts, they’ve got Mama’s marina too!” Hurk sounds a little panicked, leaning forward to grab the dashboard as Mattie grabs the steering wheel with both hands and accelerates again. “Deputy, we’ve gotta do something. We’re almost there, it’s just--” He points straight ahead, then to the right, then waves his hand helplessly. “We gotta help her!”

“It’ll be okay, Hurk,” Mattie says, already settling down into that headspace she’s created since Dutch pushed her out of his bunker, the one that lets her kill without remorse and jump into situations she shouldn’t, just because she’ll wake back up before them if something does go wrong.

Their smiles are gone.

Hurk switches off the radio.

The drive really is short, just a few more minutes and they round the last curve before the marina comes into view. Mattie’s been here once or twice, always on official business, but she’s been wanting to come out once Adelaide finishes the cabins she’s building on the property. That might not happen now, but Mattie refuses to think about it.

Now’s not the time.

She parks the car a little ways away, just off the side of the road, and climbs out. Boomer jumps from the back when she opens the door, and they meet Hurk up at the front. He’s holding a RAT4 over one shoulder and, while Mattie’s not sure that’s the best weapon for close combat, she can’t bring herself to care. Her 1911 is on her hip, her knife is on her thigh, and her AR-C is in her hands. 

This is as good as it’s gonna get.

“If you keep an eye on Boomer, he’ll let you know where peggies are hiding. Otherwise, good luck, don’t get shot, try to take out the radio towers before they call for backup, because that’s just a pain in the ass.”

“Cool, cool, very cool, man,” he says, basically bouncing in his eagerness to run ahead. “Can we, uh…” He trails off, eager but polite, and Mattie nods at him. He takes off, running straight ahead without any sort of subtlety -- but what was she expecting, really? -- and she takes the opportunity created by his distraction to sneak around the other side to yank some wires out of the radio towers set up to broadcast both Faith’s music and instructions from outpost to outpost.

The first thing Hurk makes explode earns him the attention of every goddamn peggie in the area, so she breaks the first radio without anyone noticing her, and the second radio is broken after only killing one peggie with a clean shot through the skull before he manages to get his fingers all the way around the mouthpiece.

It’s disgusting how easy killing is now. She doesn’t even flinch when she has to touch the splashes of blood on the radio to disable it. 

She hates what she’s become.

Almost the second the last peggie falls, the marina starts spinning around her, a sickening case of vertigo that has her leaning against the closest fence rail for support. A breeze tickles her face, pushing sweaty hair back from her forehead and cheeks, and it almost feels like a caress.

“I see you searching. Oh, you look lost.”

She sinks to the ground, still holding onto the post, as a woman’s voice she doesn’t know rings in her ears. She wobbles but doesn’t fall, twisting to see who’s speaking to her -- it doesn’t sound like Adelaide, doesn’t sound like anyone in particular, but… 

“When I was younger, I spent years searching. I was a rat in a maze always chasing the same rancid cheese. The Father was the first person to help me realize there’s a life beyond the maze.”

No. No. It can’t be… Faith?

“Hey, Deputy, buddy, I want you to meet my mama!” Hurk’s voice, always too loud, cuts over whatever Faith is saying, making the ringing in Mattie’s ears get louder as the vertigo spins faster. “She’s the best real estate agent in the whole county, probably the world, and -- hey, you okay, man?”

“Are you hurt, honey?” Okay, that’s Adelaide’s voice, closer than Hurk’s, close enough for cool hands to cup her face. Mattie lets her turn her face from side to side but doesn’t open her eyes, still hearing Faith’s voice under everyone else’s overlapping chatter. “Hurk, baby, help Xander get the Deputy to the office so she can sit down. I don’t think she’s bleeding, but we need to check her out.”

Two pairs of hands grip Mattie’s forearms, lifting her to her feet and then slightly higher so she doesn’t have to bear her own weight. She struggles a bit, then more as Faith’s voice drifts away and her head starts to really clear.

“ ‘m fine, I swear,” Mattie says, then repeats herself in a firmer, more official tone once the world is done spinning and she’s reasonably sure she won’t throw up if she has to move under her own power. “Hey, I said I’m  _ fine _ , I just got dizzy.”

The boys don’t listen until she’s safely deposited in Adelaide’s desk chair, though, not until she has a glass of water in her hand and Adelaide’s full attention. Adelaide is sitting on the edge of her desk, one booted food resting on the chair by Mattie’s thigh, her hands pushing Mattie’s hair out of her face once more.

“You look like you just got blissed, honey,” she says, not without sympathy. “You sure you’re okay?”

She  _ feels  _ like she’s been blissed. She must have been blissed, because what else would explain fucking hallucinating Faith’s voice in the middle of Drubman Marina?

Maybe this whole goddamn thing has been one big bliss hallucination. Maybe she and the rest of the officers got dosed trying to leave Joseph’s compound, and none of this is really happening, and she’ll wake up completely fine soon. She’s pretty sure her insurance covers mental healthcare.

That’s kind of the ideal scenario, here.

“I’m fine, promise. Probably just got grazed by a bliss bullet, or something. That stuff always makes me feel sick.”

Adelaide nods. “Good, because those peggie shitbirds took my Tulip.”

“Your what now?”

“Mama’s helicopter!” Hurk is back in her space, bumping up against Adelaide and resting his cheek against her shoulder while she pats at him absently. “She’s the best helicopter pilot in the County.”

Mattie blinks at them both, silently adding up what Hurk has said about Adelaide. So far, he’s said she’s the best realtor and the best helicopter pilot in Hope County, but she’s getting the suspicion that Hurk would say Adelaide’s the best anything she tries to do.

“She’s the nimblest goddamn bird this side of Montana, and I’ll be goddamned if those fucktrumpets are going to take her from me. I won that bird in my divorce fair and square!”

Mattie blinks again and listens silently as Adelaide finishes explaining the problem (track down her helicopter out of three options, don’t crash it, kill the pilot) with Hurk hanging off her every word. This is slightly more in line with her technical job role, something she’d be expected to do as deputy regardless of the cult situation -- they’d probably send her out with Pratt to track it down, and Pratt would leave her alone in the cruiser so he could fly it back to the marina. He’d come back to the station and complain about Adelaide flirting with him and Joey would say he should take her up on it because no one else wants in his pants.

Christ. Shit. Joey’s locked up tight in John’s bunker, unwillingly the star of some fuckin’ creepy commercials. Staci’s up in Jacob’s compound, brainwashed and barely hanging on. Burke is with Faith, probably, blissed out of his mind, and who the fuck knows where Earl is. 

And what’s she doing? Sitting in a comfy chair in the marina, like she’s on a vacation, resting on her ass while they’re fighting to stay alive.

“I’ll see what I can do about your helicopter, ma’am,” she says. She tries to stand, too, puts the water down on the desk and pushes up on the arms of the chair, but Adelaide gives her a sharp look and clucks her tongue.

“You don’t have to go right now, honey,” she says, sounding absolutely motherly for once instead of flirtatious bordering on sexual harassment. “It’s late, you should sleep here for the night. Let me, let me get Xander to make you something to eat, okay, sweetheart?”

Mattie wants to say no, wants to move as fast as she can to save as many people as she can, but… the temptation of food is too much, and she gives in before she can do more than draw a deep breath to argue.

She’s so tired.


	3. Chapter 3

It wasn’t so bad at the marina, but the deeper into the Henbane they get, the more Mattie feels like she’s been smacked right in the sinuses with like a bat or a metal pipe or something. The pollen from the fucking fields of _fucking bliss_ is so pervasive that she sneezes once every ten minutes on the dot, more than once alerting a nearby peggie to her hiding spot.

She just wants to pop three Benadryl and take an eighteen-hour nap. Maybe that would help.

Hurk and Boomer stay with her, neither of them particularly bothered by the clouds of icky greenish pollen floating in the wind, sticking with her through all the snot and the sneezing. Hurk is a constant source of chatter, which could be annoying but is actually pretty nice when the alternative is sitting in her own head worrying about everything that’s going on.

Joey. Staci. Earl. Burke. She hasn’t died again, and now she’s not sure those times weren’t bliss hallucinations. If they were -- could they happen again? Is she going to wake up in a hospital in Missoula strapped to the bed as a 10-96, her reputation in Hope County ruined?

Listening to Hurk’s (made up, she assumes) tales of the Monkey God and Kyrat is a much nicer way to spend her time. It’s good for a laugh, at least. The man is a little scattered, but he’s a natural storyteller under all that.

Mattie keeps an eye out for rogue peggie helicopters, but getting _Tulip_ back for Adelaide isn’t her top priority by any stretch of the imagination. If she’s meant to find it, she’ll find it, and she’s not going to waste time and energy driving around until she stumbles across the right vehicle. There are real lives on the line she needs to take care of first.

A couple days after they leave the marina, Mattie’s radio comes to life once more with a request for help that has Hurk cheering before she can really parse out the message.

“Hell yeah, Sharky here--” (excited whooping) “--brain-dead cultists at the trailer park.”

“That’s my baby cousin!” Hurk says, somehow fucking bouncing even with that RPG cradled in his arms like a thirty-pound infant. “He’s at the Moonflower, let’s go get him!” He pins her in place with a hopeful look that she assumes he perfected on his mother -- and then sighs because it works.

She knows Sharky by reputation, even if she’s never personally arrested him before. She’s heard Staci and Joey talk about him, and she’s seen his wanted poster still up by the Spread Eagle even though he’s not actually wanted and is out on probation, probably.

“Okay, fine.” She makes a shooing motion at him and he sets off at a jog, heading up the mountain at a pace she knows he’ll be tired of in just a few minutes. She follows anyway, more sedately, along with Boomer, and they catch up with Hurk soon enough.

About halfway up, they find a car abandoned on the side of the dirt road. There’s blood smeared on the front passenger seat and on the door, and Hurk happily climbs in the back with Boomer, leaving Mattie to climb in the relatively clean driver’s seat.

The rest of the way to the trailer park is peaceful, no cultists or bliss fields, and Hurk barely snickers when she sneezes hard and accidentally jerks the wheel to the right and runs them through the grass for a bit.

Okay, next time they come across a gas station or a truck stop or a corner store or just a regular old house that hasn’t been ransacked: she’s dosing up on Claritin. This shit is getting old.

“This used to be a real nice trailer park,” Hurk comments, leaning forward in his seat to speak almost directly into her ear. She parks the borrowed vehicle a safe distance away from another one that’s already on fire, and they both watch as something inside the fence explodes. “Not so much anymore.”

She snorts, then coughs into her elbow. “Apparently not. Let’s go.”

They climb out and Boomer runs ahead, nose to the ground and tail wagging. There don’t seem to be any cultists hanging around right now, so she keeps her weapons safely holstered even though Hurk doesn’t bother with the same courtesy, just waves with one hand when he sees a man standing on top of one of the trailers.

Mattie casts a critical eye around the place as they climb up one of the ladders to walk across the makeshift platforms. Obviously this used to be a pretty standard trailer park, small but with a cute little playground in the middle for the kids. There are no cars sitting around other than hers and the one that was on fire, and the only bodies she can see are wearing Eden’s Gate clothes. Most of the residents must have joined up with the cult or turned tail before Sharky took over.

When they get close enough, they can see Sharky is holding a flame thrower which, okay, it’s technically legal, but it still makes Mattie frown to see him with one, and apparently that frown makes her look too much like a law enforcement officer, because Sharky takes a whole step back and yells, “You’ll never take me alive!”

Mattie just stares at him. Sharky stares right back.

Hurk laughs. “Man, we ain’t here to arrest you. You think I’d bring the cops to a barbeque like this? The dep’s cool, man.”

Sharky looks her up and down and then cocks his head to the side. “ ...oh, you’re not here to arrest me?” When she shakes her head, still frowning a bit, he shrugs and seems to accept her at her word. “Cool, sorry. I am Victor Charlemagne Boshaw, but--”

She listens as he launches into his speech about who he is and what they’re going to be doing over the next few minutes, and she _knows_ it’s a terrible idea, and it must just be whatever genetics Hurk and Sharky share beyond frankly ridiculous names, but his enthusiasm is infectious and she finds herself agreeing to help him even though she shouldn’t.

The people he’s luring in need help. They need to be taken away from the Seeds’ influence and given to someone who can de-condition them, whatever that looks like. She doesn’t know how this stuff works -- it wasn’t covered in school or in the training she got from the Sheriff’s Department.

Her mind changes when she finally sees an Angel up close. Its eyes are completely white, unseeing but not in the way someone who’s simply lost vision would look. There’s a green shimmer to them, and standing too close makes her head spin around like she’s wandered too close to a bliss field again. They fight with inhuman strength, giving more of themselves over to the trouble than any human in their right mind would, and they shake off injuries that would bring down a normal person.

They’re fucking zombies. She nearly gets bit by one, saved only by the stained white mask covering its face, and it grunts and growls and then screams when she puts a bullet between its eyes. The sound makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, a shiver go down her spine.

What the fuck has Faith been _doing_ to them?

_What the fuck._

After the last Angel is put down and the last cognizant cultist is _also_ put down, and Sharky’s speakers are all disconnected from his stereo, and Mattie is done celebrating the fact that she managed to _not fucking die this time_ , Hurk and Sharky jog up to where she’s sitting on the playground steps reloading her rifle. They’re both keyed up, excited after the battle and running on adrenaline, but she’s just tired now.

She keeps saying it, but she’s so goddamn tired.

The first thing out of Sharky’s mouth is, “That was fuckin’ hot and uhhh not just cause of the fire.” She freezes, her rifle across her knees, the magazine in one hand and a few loose bullets in the other. Hurk is grinning at him, the beginnings of a laugh starting to bubble up, and Sharky immediately turns red and starts talking faster. “I mean, that didn’t help, but. I mean. Anyway. You did good, shorty, and if you want me to join up with you and Hurky, just say the word.”

Mattie clears her throat and goes back to putting the bullets back in the magazine. The smoke and gasoline fumes are mixing with her already irritated sinuses to give her a headache, and she has to pause to sneeze into her elbow again before she comes up with an answer.

“Sharky? If you burn down every field of bliss we come across, you can follow me anywhere.”

He absolutely lights up at her promise, face breaking into a wide grin as he does a little jig like he just can’t contain his joy.

It’s cute.

She ignores it.

\---

“I don’t wanna argue with your plan or nothin,” Sharky says, tone conversational and voice loud over the roar of his flamethrower, “but do you think this is like… lightin’ up a giant joint?” 

Mattie laughs behind the bandana she has tied over her face. “I wouldn’t be upset about it if it wasn’t a hallucinogen,” she says. “It’s one thing to be high and another to think you can fly when you’re on the edge of a cliff.”

Sharky glances at her over his shoulder, eyeing her up and down. “You’re kind of unusual, for the fuzz.”

She shrugs, glances away before he does, catching movement out of the corner of her eye that’s probably just Boomer or Hurk. “These are unusual times, dude.” The movement isn’t either of her other companions, so she wanders a little closer while Sharky continues burning the plants. 

“Be careful!” She can barely hear his voice now, but it doesn’t occur to her to turn back to him, back to safety. “You can’t trust your senses out here!”

There are lights flashing in her vision, and she pauses to rub at her eyes with her knuckles. The lights are still there when she opens them again, her chest tight, and she pulls her bandana down so she can breathe freely.

It’s a mistake.

The bliss hits her full force, knocking her off balance, the vertigo from the marina back as Faith steps in front of her.

“Welcome to the bliss.”

Faith’s hands are on her shoulders, slipping down her arms to her hands, then she’s slipping away, and Mattie is following her without question, without even trying to grab a _weapon_ , just… blindly following this woman through bliss pollen so thick it might as well be fog.

Faith stays just a step away the whole time, no matter how fast Mattie moves or how she lunges, giggling and twirling and speaking about who she _really_ is in a sing-song voice.

Mattie barely even notices she’s on top of Joseph’s statue because Burke is there too, and when she tries to tackle him, he just… steps off the statue as Faith urges Mattie to do the same.

And, still surrounded by the bliss… she does.

\---

“Oh, she’s waking up. Come on, Dep, you okay, man?”

She opens her eyes slowly, forcing herself to move even though every fiber of her being is screaming for her to keep her eyes closed and surrender to the _white black white_ she’s gotten used to, that she’s started to miss just plowing through Hope County like it’s her own personal sandbox to destroy however she wants.

“I knew we shouldn’t have stuck around after the bliss started burning,” Sharky says, his voice coming from her other side. She can’t see either man, just the blue sky above her. There’s a single cloud that’s almost a perfect circle. “And you _know_ I love fire, man, it’s just the best.”

She squeezes her eyes closed again, tight enough that she can see white lights that don’t have anything to do with bliss, then she opens them and sits up. She’s wobbly, but two sets of hands are there to help her, overlapping chatter from the two men drowning out her spiraling thoughts.

One of them hands her a water bottle and she drinks from it, unconcerned with the dampness from the grass cooling on her shirt and sinking deeper into her worn jeans. The water is warm and unpleasant, but she forces herself to swallow three mouthfuls before passing it back.

“Mayor’s on the radio,” Hurk says, talking a little louder to cut Sharky off. “Says they got supplies over in the jail, maybe they can help. Here, cuz, where’s the radio?”

Sharky produces the little hand-held with a flair, and Mattie wonders if they took it to call for help but doesn’t have time to ask because it’s switched on and she can hear Minkler’s voice coming through all tinny. “ _Anyone looking for refuge, come to the Hope County Jail. We have beds and food here._ ”

The radio goes silent and Hurk clicks it off. Mattie stares off in the direction she thinks the jail is instead of looking at either of the guys, and then she takes a deep breath. She doesn’t really want to go back to the jail, doesn’t want to see what happened to it once Joseph’s people took over, doesn’t want to face anyone she might know.

“It would be nice to have some real food,” she says, voice hoarse and throat raw. “Like, some vegetables.”

Both the boys are nodding, but Sharky’s the one who opens his mouth first. “I am not going to lie to you,” he says. “I have not pooped in six days.”

Mattie’s attention snaps from the crest of the hill to Hurk’s eyes, then they’re both turning to look at Sharky, whose face is a little screwed up like he’s not totally sure he actually said that _out loud_ , and then... 

They’re all laughing, the tension broken, worry she hadn’t realized was on their faces melting away. She starts to stand and they both haul themselves to their feet and pull her up with them, propping her up between them, and she lets them because it’s been weeks since she felt the warmth of another human’s touch.

She lets Hurk drive, lets Sharky sit up front next to him, stretches herself across the back seat with Boomer on the floor, listens to them chatting about how weird it is that Hurk and his dad have the same name, smiles at the absurdity of it all, then frowns when guilt at feeling happy when her friends are being tortured sneaks in.

It takes a few minutes to get to the jail, driving slowly down the mountain and along switchbacks that Hurk is taking much more carefully than she really thought he would, and she’s able to stare at the trees passing upside down over her head. 

“Oh, shit, man.” The car comes to an abrupt stop and Mattie almost slides off the seat and onto Boomer. “Looks like peggies got the jail.”

Mattie’s stomach clenches; a cold sweat stands out on her skin. She sits up, leaning forward with her hands on the front seats. Sharky looks over at her, but she just stares through the windshield, squinting to see the details. There are peggies absolutely swarming in the front parking lot, up the hill from where Hurk pulled the car to a stop. 

“Shit.” Mattie digs her fingernails into the front seats, letting the little pricks of pain ground her for the half-second she needs to pull her thoughts away from fresh food and back to fighting. The peggies are overwhelming the jail; they need to help. “Jesus Christ, fucking -- okay. Hurk, do _not_ blow up the jail, there are civilians in there. Find something off to the side, make a distraction. I’ll come in from the other side.”

“What do you want me to do, Dep?” Sharky asks, still too loud but serious now. His fingers are drumming on the door handle, ready to go.

She bites her lower lip, accidentally pulls a piece of dead skin off. “Fuck shit up.”

He hops out of the car and cheers. Hurk follows suit, and she jumps out with Boomer more quietly, double checking her AR-C before she follows them up the hill.

The place is a disaster. There are burnt-out cars in the parking lot, enough smoke floating through the air to make her eyes water, peggies screaming and attacking the outside walls. There are people she doesn’t recognize up on top, behind the razor wire, and she hopes they see her red flannel, Hurk’s stars-and-stripes, or Sharky’s green hoodie and realize they’re not peggies, hopes the smoke and chaos won’t be their downfall.

She doesn’t want to have to do this again, too.

Two peggies fall under her spray of bullets as something explodes off to the left side of the jail. As she’d hoped, the peggies scramble around, not sure who’s attacking them, and it makes it easy for her to sneak around and snap the neck of a third man.

When her radio crackles to life, she almost doesn’t hear it. “ _Hey is that you, Rook?_ ” Earl. Earl. It’s Earl. He’s alive. He’s here? She blinks hard to clear her eyes of tears that suddenly have nothing to do with the smoke and squats behind a car that smells of burned rubber, pulling her radio to her face to hear the rest of his message: “ _Ah, Christ, help us out here._ ” 

She starts to press the talk button but a woman spots her, runs over with a shovel raised, and Mattie has enough time to wonder who shows up to a prison siege with only a shovel as a weapon before she has her pistol up and puts a bullet between the woman’s eyes.

When the last parking lot peggie falls, there are a few seconds where the only sounds are the roaring of flames, and then one of the doors in the wall opens. She walks through, doesn’t look back to see if Hurk or Sharky are following her, just steps into the courtyard and waits.

“Holy shit.” She snaps around to see Earl weaving his way through the rubble, his hat on his head and a smile on his face. He looks good, he looks healthy, and he’s trying to talk to her but she’s throwing her arms around his neck and bursting into tears before he has a chance to get out a full sentence.

He grunts and staggers back a step, but his arms still wrap around her waist and he squeezes her almost as tightly as she’s squeezing him. He rubs one hand up and down her back, soothing, shushing her when it only makes her cry harder.

She doesn’t care that she’s standing in the middle of the courtyard where everyone can see her. She doesn’t care that she’s getting tears and snot all over the shoulder of her boss’ uniform. All she cares about is that he’s alive, and he’s healthy, and he’s not an angel or trapped in a bunker, and she’s so overwhelmed with relief that she doesn’t know how to handle herself anymore.

“You’re alright, sweetheart.” He cups the back of her head like he might a child’s, comforting, and she draws in a shaky breath in an effort to just stop fucking crying. “We’re okay.”

She squeezes him even tighter for half a second then forces herself to step back. It feels like she has to unclench each of her fingers individually, has to scrape the toes of her stolen boots over the crumbling asphalt before she can give him the space she’s supposed to. She wipes at her eyes with the backs of her hands, wipes at her running nose and makes an ungodly noise when she intends to make a dainty sniffle.

“Sorry.”

“You’re alright,” he says, again, this time clapping her on the shoulder like he used to sometimes. “You really saved our bacon. The peggies’ve been throwing themselves at these walls for days. They just won’t let up.” He looks at the injured stretched out on the ground, then back to meet her eyes, a grim look on his face. “We really kicked open the hornets’ nest.”

Yeah. Yeah. They weren’t ready to arrest Joseph, should have waited longer or should have done it months earlier, before John had bought up so much of the county, before Jacob started kidnapping the locals, before Faith perfected her bliss formula, before everything went to shit.

Their moment of silence is interrupted by a man yelling a warning from the high walls, then being pushed back by a grenade. He falls in front of Mattie, his body hitting the asphalt with a sickening thunk. Blood pools under his head and his eyes stare, unseeing, up at the blue sky.

Earl jumps into action before she does, numbed as she is by everything. He checks the man’s pulse, yells for a medic, and part of her brain that she’d tried to bury wants her to respond. _I’m a medic. I know that man’s gone._

He snaps her out of it. “I need you up on that wall, Rook,” he says, and he looks sorry to say it, but his silent regret doesn’t make the need less dire, doesn’t mean not fighting back won’t lead to all of them being tortured at the hands of Faith or her brothers.

So… she does it. She does what he asks her to, does what she needs to do to protect the people in the jail. Minkler fights by her side for as long as he can, but he’s a politician, not a soldier, and the second time he trips over his own feet, she shoves him in the shoulder and tells him to get the fuck inside.

Sharky and Hurk fight with her too, performing better than she thought they would when she first saw them. Hurk, in particular, is able to keep his mouth shut and grenades sailing through the air with remarkable precision, so much so that she starts to think there’s some truth to the wild stories he’s been spinning in their down time. Sharky swaps his flamethrower out for a more reasonable AK-47, and she smiles when she sees it but doesn’t bother to reflect on why she thinks that weapon is _reasonable,_ just keeps fighting.

It’s all she can do.

Just keep fighting.

\---

“So are you fucking the sheriff, or…?” Sharky lets the tail end of his question trail off, like he hadn’t already asked the most important part, the part that has her wrinkling her nose in distaste before she starts laughing. He blinks at her, lips pulling up in a grin when she starts to laugh, and pulls his hat off to run his hand through his hair. It sticks up when he’s done, dirty, greasy from hours of sweating under the brim, and she’s happy the jail still has working showers.

“No,” she says. “I’m not. I’ve never even thought -- why would you ask that?” She sits on the edge of the cot she’s been assigned even though there’s still dirt on the seat of her jeans, starts untying her boots as she listens to Sharky take a sharp breath before launching into what she assumes is going to be quite the speech.

“It’s just, you were pretty happy to see him, I guess.” He pauses and sighs. “I’ve never seen anybody cry that hard into a hug.”

Mattie sits up and scratches the tip of her nose. She can feel her cheeks heating up a bit as he stares at her, waiting. “The Seeds have all my other friends. I thought they had him too.” She shrugs and fiddles with the tail of her shirt, rubbing the soft cotton between her fingers. Sharky’s looking at her with something a little too understanding on his face, so she looks down into her lap and chews at the dead skin on her lip.

“Hurky and me, we’ll help you get your friends back,” he says, squeezing the bill of his hat between his hands. She watches the motion, the nervousness of it, then meets his gaze just before he says, “That’s what friends are for, right?”

The earnestness on his face, of his offer, makes her smile. It eases the tight ball in her chest, and she takes what feels like the first full breath of the day. “I really appreciate it, Sharky.”

He shrugs, dismissing her thanks. “Once you get the other deputies back, you still won’t arrest me, right? For all the fire, and the murdering, and all?” He pitches his voice lower, but he’s still too loud. It’s like the man never learned how to whisper.

She stands and knocks his shoulder with her fist. “If anyone’s getting in trouble for what we’ve been doing out there, it’s me. You’re fine. I promise we won’t arrest you.”

“Okay, good,” Sharky says, voice brightening again. “You gonna shower now?”

“Mhm. Be right back.” She knocks him in the shoulder again for good measure.

He throws his hat at her back as she walks away.

\---

She doesn’t remember dying this time. She knows what it feels like -- getting shot, falling too far, having her neck snapped, drowning, being run over by a car, or being struck in the face with the butt of some peggie’s rifle -- but she doesn’t know which of those things put her in the _black white black_ this time.

She doesn’t remember, but she’s trapped here, searching through a place she can’t see for an exit she’s not sure exists.

Is this the final time? Has she used up her thirty lives and is now doomed to run through this place for the rest of eternity? Was she supposed to do something different, behave better, make choices for _good_ and she ran out of chances and this is what hell is?

She grew up expecting a lake of fire, not this… nothingness.

She can’t stop the sobs, can’t stop herself from screaming for help even though it's useless.

She screams and screams and screams and

She wakes up with a start, her limbs jerking like she suddenly fell, and she tries to sit up but there’s a hand in hers and another wiping tears from her face. It doesn’t feel like a threat, so she relaxes and forces her eyes to look at something other than the ceiling.

For half a second, she’s certain the gentle touches belong to Joey, like she’s fallen asleep during a movie night and Joey’s absently stroking her hair. A half-second after that, she’s certain the gentle touches belong to Staci, because the hands are bigger than Joey’s, and he never complained when she flopped on him like a cat needing attention.

“There you are, shorty.” Sharky’s voice reminds her where she is and who she’s with, and she draws in a wet, shaky breath as the reality of everything crashes full-force into her. His fingers tighten around hers, and she curls her body around that point of contact. “You been crying in your sleep and didn’t wanna wake up, but you calmed down as long as I was holding your hand.”

She wipes her face on the back of her sleeve. “Sorry,” she says, voice thick and wet. “Did I wake you up?”

He brushes her hair away from her face. “Nah, I was still awake. Don’t worry about it.”

It doesn’t seem right that this large, boisterous man should be the one comforting her in the middle of the night, but she can’t help the impulse that tells her to nuzzle into his hand. She turns into it, blinking up at him in the dim light of what used to be the department’s bullpen, and he grins back down at her.

He’s sitting on the floor at the edge of her cot, long legs stretched out on the dirty tile floor, still in his jeans but now without his boots or hoodie. He’s got a ratty wifebeater tank on instead, stretched out at the neckline, and she can see faded swirls of ink on one of his biceps. She huffs out a laugh, and he squeezes her fingers in reply.

“How long’ve you been sitting there?”

She doesn’t mention their entwined fingers. He doesn’t seem keen to bring it up either.

“Uhh, dunno, like thirty minutes?” He shrugs, still playing with her hair. “You wouldn’t wake up.”

“I took like… four benadryl after my shower.” She starts to roll onto her back to stretch, and he releases her, moving back a little like he’s going to get on his bed. “I was dreaming that, uhm.” How best to describe it? He won’t believe her. “I was just trapped and no one could hear me.”

He nods again. “Don’t like small spaces?”

She actually does laugh this time, a sharp noise that surprises them both. “You could say that, yeah.” She considers telling him more, then remembers something he said earlier. “Wait, you’re _still_ awake? Not sleeping?”

“Can’t always make my brain shut off,” he says. “Specially these days.”

She turns back onto her side and props herself up on one elbow, considering, weighing the pros and cons and the chances he’ll take what she wants to say the wrong way… then she decides a guy who’s willing to sit on the cold, hard floor holding her hand for half an hour to make her feel better is exactly the kind of guy she can trust.

“Come lie down with me.”

He blinks at her, cocks his head to the side like a puppy, like he’s not sure he heard her right. 

“I always sleep better when there’s someone with me. Maybe you will too.” When he doesn’t respond right away, she adds: “Humans need touch. It’s good for you. Just hop up here and go to sleep.”

He’s surprisingly silent, but he moves from his cot to hers, sits on the side to test the waters, then stretches out next to her when she doesn’t do anything to make him think her offer is a joke. She makes room for him, waits for his head to hit the pillow before she cuddles against his side, curling into his warmth with a self-satisfied sigh.

“See? It’s nice.”

It helps her forget the cold emptiness of the _black white black_ in her dream, reminds her that this is _real_ and she’s _real_ and the people she’s fighting for are real too.

He jumps a little when he hears her voice, then he rolls onto his side, toward her. She gives him room to settle, then moves back in, head tucked under his chin.

“All good?”

He takes in a deep breath, lets it out in a slow exhale before he replies. “Yeah. You’re right.” His arm loops over her waist, just resting, then pulls her a little closer. “All good.”

\---

Sharky doesn’t say anything about her nightmare or her offer-slash-demand for three a.m. cuddles, just slips out of her bed without waking her up from the second half of her nine-hour benadryl nap, leaving behind a cold spot and a pillow that smells faintly of gasoline. She was right though, sleeping with another body next to her soothed her until she was able to float dreamlessly through the rest of the night. 

She can only hope he feels the same.

Breakfast is instant coffee and a crumbly granola bar eaten at Earl’s side as he and the mayor take turns talking about events around the Henbane: bliss in the water, bliss plants growing unchecked, angels wandering along the roads, and Burke still with Faith.

“I can’t leave Joey and Staci to go after Burke.” She feels guilty even as she says it, knows the importance of the Marshal, but… “I can’t. You haven’t seen what I have.”

Minkler looks shocked, but Earl is nodding before she’s even finished her sentence.

“You do what you need to do, Rook,” he says. “We’re counting on you.”

She nods at him even though that makes her angry -- why is everyone counting on her? Why is this her responsibility? She’s not the only one in Hope County who’s physically capable of fighting back against the Seeds; she’s not even the most qualified.

She’s just the one person who managed to completely escape the Seeds on that first night.

“Hey.” His voice, pitched low, draws her out of that cloud of anger, and she blinks up at him as he says, “Stay safe out there, okay?”

The fight bleeds out of her as she sighs. “You too.”

Sharky and Hurk are already dressed and kitted up, standing by the jail gates and arguing good-naturedly about something. She catches just the tail end of the discussion, right when Hurk raises his voice and throws his arms out to the side: “--show my chimps, _that’s right, they’re chimps,_ some respect! And don’t go slanderin’ their names!”

Sharky catches her eye and her confused expression and starts laughing even harder, tipping his head back and letting the sound echo around the courtyard. It’s catching, and she finds herself laughing before she has time to remember why she’d been frowning in the first place.

“You boys ready to go?” She stops a few paces away from them, tucks her hands into her pockets while she waits, and Hurk turns around to look back at her.

“I think I’m gonna head back up to the marina,” Hurk says, “maybe see if I can’t find Mama’s helicopter. You’n’Sharky’ll be okay without me?” He looks nervous like he’s afraid she’s going to say no, so she makes sure she keeps smiling at him even though the idea of him flying a helicopter makes her super fucking nervous.

“We’ll be okay, Hurk. You do what you need to do.” It’s the same thing Earl said to her, and she sighs a little even as her smile stays.

His face lights up. “Okay! Call me when you come back around, and I’ll come help you, okay?” He’s grabbing her up in a bear hug before she has time to nod, and she can’t do anything but chuckle as he picks her up off her feet and sets her back down. “Don’t get into too much trouble without me.”

“You too,” she says, breathless, amused, and she waits quietly as Sharky gets a similarly enthusiastic goodbye.

“Have you seen Boomer this morning?”

Sharky answers by pointing; Boomer’s on his back in a patch of sun, a woman Mattie doesn’t recognize kneeling beside him to scratch at his belly. Boomer blinks his eyes open when his name is called, then rolls to his feet like he’s just remembered he’s late for work. He gives the woman a wet kiss, which makes her laugh, and then runs over and jumps up onto Mattie with his front paws.

“There’s my good boy,” she coos, and ignores Sharky’s vague noise of disgust when she accepts a slobbery Boomer-kiss of her own.

When Boomer calms down enough to sit by her feet, she puts her hands on her hips and looks up at Sharky. “Ready to fuck up John’s day?”

His face lights up. “Hell yeah, chica. Lead the way.”


	4. Chapter 4

It’s almost like John knows exactly when she crosses over the Henbane River and back into the Valley. Her radio crackles to life, interrupting the comfortable silence in the car; Sharky jerks in his seat like he was falling asleep, and Mattie covers up her giggle with a little cough.

_“Why… is it so difficult for you to understand that all of your efforts are absolutely, unquestionably… worthless?”_

She hisses at his words, gripping the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles blanch. She grits her teeth and pushes too hard on the accelerator, taking the car from a comfortably legal 45 miles per hour up to 55. Sharky reaches up and grabs the handle over the door, but doesn’t speak.

_“You believe you're on the righteous path, you believe you're a force for good, but you're not! You're selfish. All you're really doing is quenching your thirst for blood.”_

His voice is mocking, derisive, and she bares her teeth even though he can’t see. She sees a peggie on the side of the road with a regular person in the dirt on their knees, and she veers to run them over without a second thought. The peggie crumples; the captive hops to their feet and sprints away.

Maybe John has a point. Maybe she does have a thirst for blood. 

Like his people are any better.

_“We're going to share a beautiful moment, and you're going to tell me your deepest… darkest… fears.”_

The radio clicks off. Mattie forces herself to ease off the accelerator, but she can’t make her fingers relax on the wheel.

“A beautiful moment, huh? Sounds gross.”

She lets out a bark of laughter, fingers relaxing on their own accord. When she glances at Sharky out of the corner of her eyes, he’s smirking at her, eyes sparkling. 

“Man, he sure does have a hard-on for you.”

“Oh, my god,” she laughs again, reaching over to slap at his arm. “Gross.”

“So I’m thinkin’,” he continues, and she can hear him smiling even though she’s trying to focus on the road, “you should probably just fuck and get it over with.”

“No! Sharky! Oh my _god_.” She hits him again, but they’re both laughing. “You’re gonna be sorry when I throw up in this car.” 

He just shrugs and fishes around in his pockets for what turns out to be a crumpled pack of cigarettes. “I mean, if you don’t wanna give one up for the team…” He’s faster at finding his lighter, but he only gets to take one good drag before Mattie’s reaching over and plucking the cigarette out of his mouth.

“Thanks, dude,” she says, sticking it between her lips instead. She winks at him. “Thoughtful of you.”

He rolls his eyes and lights a second one. This one she lets him keep.

\---

She’s met Nick Rye a handful of times, mostly at the occasional neighborhood barbeque she was bribed by Joey or Staci into attending, once to give him a ticket for going near double the speed limit in the Henbane (she knocked the recorded speed down on the ticket to give him a break, but he was going _very_ fast), and the sight of peggies crawling all over his property makes her stomach turn.

Boomer is thrilled to be free of the car, running ahead with gleeful barks to bite at the heels of the first peggie he comes across. Shit’s on fire and there’s debris on the runway, and she suddenly remembers she never got to take the aerial tour he was always bragging about.

Sharky helps her bring down the peggies, setting even more shit on fire, and then the little battle is done (when did killing only six people become a “little battle”?) and they find Nick pacing in his garage. 

He gives her a full on hug when he sees her, almost knocks the hat off his head with his enthusiasm, and she squeezes him back in exhausted relief. She’d rather die -- actually die -- than have something bad happen to him or Kim. They’re good people, some of the best.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he says, then he releases her from his hug and puts his hands on her shoulders instead. He shakes her a little, still worked up, and is too loud when he says, “We’re fuckin’ trapped! I’m gonna kill that sonuvabitch John Seed.”

Mattie nods at him, not all that concerned at the threat even though technically she should be. “What’s up, Nick?”

“You see those peggies take off with my plane? We need it! Without it, my family is _fucked._ Please.” He looks up at Sharky, then back at Mattie, eyebrows drawn together over his mirrored glasses. She can see herself in them, dirty and sweaty, deep circles under her eyes, already nodding before he’s finished asking, “I need your help.”

“You think John has it as his ranch?” She’s never been, personally, but she knows people who have been, and it’s supposed to be beautiful. It also has a private airstrip, because John flies planes as a _hobby_. “I guess it’s the only other place that makes sense.”

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Nick says, but he’s already letting her go and walking deeper into his garage. “I just can’t leave Kim, you know.”

Mattie and Sharky trail after him. “Yeah. How’s she doing?”

“She’s due any second. Here, you feelin’ okay?” Nick squats behind the counter and pops back up with ammo boxes in his hands. He sets them down and disappears again, coming up with a first aid kit. “I really appreciate you doin’ this for us. You know how to fly?”

She shrugs, takes the ammo she needs and then lets Sharky take a look. She doesn’t take the first aid kit.

“I’ve flown once,” she says, and it feels like a lifetime ago. “Stace -- uh, one of the other deputies was a licensed pilot, and he used to make me practice on the simulator so he could boss me around.”

Nick winces, but he nods anyway. “I can talk you through it. Just call me on the radio when you find my plane.”

“Sure thing,” she says. “I’ll go now.” 

She makes it out of the garage with Nick still thanking her, then she turns to Sharky as soon as Nick is out of earshot. “I want you to stay here.”

“What? No fuckin’ way.” He’s too loud, so she shushes him, but he just glares down at her. 

She falls into her cop stance without really thinking about it, one hand on her hip and the other hovering near her pistol. She levels a glare at him and he stares right back, not at all intimidated by the woman he spent the night spooning through her tears. “It’s dangerous, and it’s faster if I just get in by myself and fly the plane home.”

“You can’t go by yourself!” Sharky flails his arms around as though that will help him make his point. “It’s dangerous! You need my backup!”

“I need to go in quietly, and you’re good at a lot of things, but I don’t think being quiet is one of them.”

He frowns, the fight melting out of him. “I don’t like it.”

“I’ll come right back here,” she says, _promises._ He doesn’t understand she won’t die if she’s alone. She won’t die, she can’t die, but he… he can. She doesn’t want him to die. She doesn’t want that on her conscience, not when she can keep him safe just by making him stay with the Ryes. “Okay?”

She offers him her fist, and he bumps it after a second’s hesitation.

She makes it halfway to the ranch before he catches up with her.

“God _damn_ it, Sharky.” She covers her eyes with her hands. “I thought you were going to stay with Nick.”

He offers her a grin. “You see, I thought about it, but I just can’t sit by and let you walk into danger by yourself. You haven’t arrested me yet, and I respect that you totally could’ve by now, but that means I owe you. You’ve pulled my ass out of the fire, literally and figuratively, and I just think I need to stick by you. You know. Ride or die?”

“Ride or die?”

Christ, that makes her chest hurt. What has she done to inspire that loyalty?

“Yeah!” He shrugs. “So… we doin’ this?”

She wants to say no. She wants to send him back to Nick, back to where he’s safe. But… he won’t listen. He obviously is dead set on staying with her. All she can do is try to keep him safe.

“Yeah,” she says. “I guess we are.”

\---

John’s ranch is absolutely crawling with peggies, and Mattie sits at the edge of the property, still concealed in the trees, watching them go about their business through her binoculars. Boomer sits alert at her side, ears cocked, nose testing the air every few seconds in case one of the cultists gets close enough to smell. Sharky sits at her other side, chin in his hand, watching the peggies with a sense of detached boredom.

She finally lowers the binoculars when he sighs and starts gnawing on his nails.

“Are you having a problem?”

“I’m just ready to bang some peggie heads together, that’s all,” he says, and at least he’s kinda quiet this time. “Didn’t think it would take this long.”

Anger flares, hot and bright. “I’m trying not to get you fuckin’ killed since you won’t fuckin’ stay at the Ryes’.” Sharky freezes at the bite in her voice, lowers his hand to his lap and presses his lips together. His expression looks so much like a kicked puppy that she’s torn between laughing and feeling bad; she settles for feeling bad. “Just… give me another minute, okay? We don’t want to burn the place down.”

When his expression doesn’t shift, she leans into his space and bumps his shoulder with hers. He huffs, then when she looks back over at him, he smiles. 

“Maybe _you_ don’t want to burn the place down.”

She raises the binoculars back up to her face, finds the peggie sniper standing on John’s roof. “Keep it in your pants, Boshaw.”

She listens to him snickering for a minute and doesn’t fight the smile from blooming on her face. It’s almost easy to forget they’re about to commit several crimes in the process of stealing Nick’s plane back from a cult leader.

“Okay, I’m going to sneak around that way,” she says, pointing around the back of the house, towards the garage. “You cover me, take out anyone who happens to notice. Once you see me in the plane, head back to Nick’s.”

Sharky frowns again. “But--”

“Would you just fucking listen--”

Boomer barks, once, a sharp warning before taking off. Something lands in the dirt between Sharky and Mattie, comes to a rest against her knee, and she doesn’t even panic when she looks down to see a grenade, just scoops it up and tosses it back where she thinks it came from -- back toward John’s house, into his yard, where it explodes and sets a truck on fire.

“Holy shit,” Sharky starts, but she barrels right over him with a simple command.

“Go!”

She rolls to the side and vaguely hopes he’s done the same, then she pops up right in the space of the peggie who threw the grenade, running forward to finish the job. She punches him in the throat, then grabs the back of his head and introduces it to her knee. It crunches sickeningly, sends pain radiating up toward her hip, and when she drops him there’s a dark, wet stain on her jeans.

The rest of the cultists fall quickly, though one gets close enough to give her what she’s sure is going to be a beautiful black eye when she’s busy ripping the wires out of the radio tower. If they hadn’t cut off most of the usual means of communication in the county to keep citizens from calling for help, they wouldn’t have to keep setting these things up for her to tear apart. 

John’s front yard is littered with corpses, abandoned weapons, and two burning trucks filling the air with thick smoke and the acrid scent of burning rubber and hot metal. Boomer runs up to her with a handgun in his mouth, and she’d be more worried if she’d never seen him do it before. She can’t quite figure out how to get him to quit, so she just leans down and takes the slobbery weapon from him and scratches him behind the ear in thanks.

He runs off again, and his spot on the porch is replaced by Sharky who has his hands tucked deep in his pockets and a wide grin on his face.

“Glad you brought me now?”

She rolls her eyes at him, but that grin is infectious and she can’t stop herself from laughing just a heartbeat later. “You’re a dork,” she says, and he just keeps beaming down at her. “Wanna go look through John’s shit?”

“Hell yeah!” Sharky bounces like this is the first time he’s considered he has mostly free reign of John’s house, takes three normal steps toward the open front doors before breaking into a jog. Mattie trails behind him, not hiding her little smile, fingers brushing over the tender spot along her cheekbone. 

It takes her three tries to find John’s kitchen, first opening up a door to a study and then a formal dining room (of fucking course -- he probably hosts Seed family dinners here, all the fucking cult leaders in one place, listening to Joseph preach and watching Faith float around the room), and then when she finally pushes the kitchen door open she nearly bumps into Sharky on his way out. He’s got a real ice pack in his hand, the kind with the little gel balls inside so it will stay flexible, and he’s wrapping a hand towel around it.

“You okay?” Even with her cold fingers pressed back to her bruise, concern that he’s hurt and she hadn’t noticed fills her, wrinkles her forehead. 

He rolls his eyes at her, then cups her jaw with one hand to hold her still and presses the ice pack against her temple. His fingers tighten when she hisses and flinches away, holding her still, and she glares up at him with her good eye.

“ ’s cold.” It’s also most of why she was looking for the kitchen, and she’s only arguing because she’s kind of embarrassed at how she assumed it was for him and how good it feels to have someone worry about her beyond what she can do for them. His fingers are warm where they’re still cupping her jaw, his thumb sweeping across her cheek, and she’s almost entirely sure he’ll be able to _feel_ her blushing just as easy as he can see it, so she closes her eyes and leans into the gentle touch.

“I came in here lookin’ for frozen peas or some shit, but figured this would do just as well. Hell of a shiner you’re getting here, Dep. Didn’t think you’d let a peggie ever get close enough to you to take a swing.”

She licks her lips before she speaks. “It was a lucky punch.”

The ice repositions on her face, moves closer to where the punch landed, right where the bruising is worst. “You got shit luck.”

The laugh that escapes her is too high pitched, a little too hysterical, because Sharky doesn’t even know the half of it. His stroking thumb stills on her face, and she forces herself to pull back from the breakdown she can feel bubbling up in her chest. She doesn’t know if she’s going to keep laughing or burst into tears or just curl into Sharky’s body heat like a cat, but she needs to stop it.

She takes a deep breath and reaches up to take the ice pack from him. He doesn’t move right away, not even when she covers his ice-cold fingers with her own slightly warmer ones, just stands there with his hands on her face until she opens her eyes and looks up at him.

The moment stretches, silent, and then it’s gone as he lets his hands drop back to his sides and he takes a step back. “I’m gonna see if I can find any contraband,” he informs her, too loud in the quiet. “Or like, a weird sex dungeon. Seems like Johnny’d have one, somewhere.”

“You sound like Adelaide,” Mattie says, forcing a smile, glad for the subject change. She pushes deeper into the kitchen, admiring the size and decor despite herself. It would be amazing to cook in here.

Sharky’s laugh follows him down the hall, and Mattie’s finally alone again, able to lean against the counter and groan into her hand.

How has her life come to this?

\---

John calls her on the radio when she takes off in Nick’s plane, clammy hands clutching the throttle and her heart already in her throat. When she hears his hissed voice coming through the receiver, she’s afraid for a few heart-stopping moments that she’ll actually be sick in Nick’s plane and she’ll have to return it to him covered in vomit.

She swallows hard and doesn’t get sick.

John’s not sure whether to be more mad that she’s taken over his house or that she’s stolen Nick’s plane, but he does manage to make a confusing reference to his walls screaming and a threat about skinning her and hanging her skin over the mantle -- which, gross, who even thinks about that? -- and she resolutely ignores the talk button on her radio. He doesn’t deserve any response she can think of.

Nick comes on when John’s finished pitching his goddamned hissy fit, guiding her through a couple of exercises to make sure the plane’s in top shape, then she flies the plane along the river back to his house.

If flying didn’t have to happen so high off the ground, she’d like it a lot more.

\---

By the time she makes it back to the ranch -- having helped Nick defend his property, load his car, _un_ load his car, and accepted water and snacks from Kim -- it’s dark out and weariness has settled so deep inside her bones she’s not sure she’ll ever feel fully rested again.

The vehicle fires have burned themselves out in John’s driveway, the doors are closed, and no peggies are in sight. Boomer’s asleep on the front porch, but he doesn’t do much more than open his eyes and sigh heavily, like he’s saying _good, you’re back, do you know what time it is, young lady?,_ and roll over to sleep more.

The place is hazy with smoke when she opens the door, the distinctive scent of marijuana hitting her right in the face. She coughs, starts to hold her breath, then she just laughs.

“Sharky?”

He waves when he hears his name, and she finds him reclining on one of the leather couches, hat and shoes off, a joint in his hand and an ashtray balanced on his chest. 

“Party got started without ya,” he says, smile soft as he offers the joint over to her. When she hesitates, he prods, “C’mon, who’s gonna arrest you for it?”

Oh, well, fuck it. “Good point,” she says, and takes it from him. She inhales deeply, closes her eyes and holds her breath for as long as she can before releasing a thick cloud of smoke. “You been carrying this the whole time?”

“That’s the best part! John had two dime bags sitting right on the table here. Wonder what Joe would think about that.” 

She takes another deep drag before she starts to feel her muscles loosening. “They probably think it’s okay, ‘cause it’s natural, like the bliss or whatever the fuck,” she says, then passes the joint back and sits right on the low table to start unlacing her boots. “Which is, whatever, I don’t care, but it would be fuckin’ hilarious to finally nail John on possession when we know he’s doing all this other shit.”

The urge to start laughing rises up and she fights against it, focuses on getting out of her boots, then out of her bloody flannel. She badly needs a shower, but the thought of walking around until she finds one is just exhausting.

“What’s all that?” Sharky’s hand is suddenly in her space, fingers brushing over the sharpie marks on her arm. She shivers and doesn’t hide it as his touch tickles her sensitive skin, turning her hand to catch his as he starts to pull away.

“It’s how many times I’ve died,” she says, honesty coming out before she can think to lie. “I need to add one, though, since there was a fight at Nick’s.”

Sharky’s hand disappears from her view, and her stomach drops when she realizes what she’s said, what she’s admitted to, what he must be thinking --

“What the _fuck?”_

His hand is back, grabbing her arm and pulling her forward so he can fully see the lines covering her skin. The oldest ones, from Fall's End, are starting to fade, but there are so many others, covering her from the crook of her elbow right down to her wrist. She started out making the marks too big, so they start to taper off around #15, but they’re still easy enough to count.

“Thirty-two? You tryna tell me you _died_ thirty-two times?”

She risks a glance up at his face, breath still caught up in her throat, but it doesn’t look like he’s laughing at her, or like he thinks she’s gone crazy. He just looks… surprised, almost in awe.

“Yeah. Mostly at the beginning, when I was by myself.” Her breath catches again when he runs the fingers of his free hand down her forearm again, clears her throat to move past it. “You’n Hurk helped a lot.”

“You’re not dead, though.”

“No. Every time I just… listen, I can’t explain it, okay? It really fucking hurts, and then everything goes black, and then I start over a few minutes before I died, with enough time to do something different. If that grenade today had exploded, I would have started over right before it landed between us, and I would’ve known to throw it back.”

She watches his face as he listens to her and stares at her arm. His eyes are red, his lips parted like he’s so shocked he just forgot to close them, and the reverence on his face is almost enough to make her cry.

“Is that what happened? Today?”

“No.” She shakes her head, her weariness creeping back and making her eyelids too heavy. “I’ve just tossed enough grenades back where they came from to not be freaked out by it, s’all.”

“Well, goddamn,” Sharky murmurs. He releases her hand and sits up straighter, meeting her eyes from his seat on the couch. “God _damn_.”

“Yeah, that’s the sum of it.”

Sharky takes another hit and passes the joint off to her. She takes it then snuffs it out on the ashtray that he’d let fall to the floor when he sat up.

“So you believe me?”

He blinks at her as he refocuses his attention on her instead of whatever he was looking at on the ceiling. “What? ’Course I do. You wouldn’t lie about that, would you, Dep?”

“Well. No. I just thought you’d think I’m crazy.”

He blinks at her real slow, then shakes his head again. “You’ve heard all Hurky’s stories, right?” He stops talking long enough to pull his hoodie off over his head, then he lies down on the couch. “You think all that’s real, but I wouldn’t believe you? None of this shit makes sense -- hey, watch the moneymaker.”

Mattie, who started crawling into Sharky’s space the second he was horizontal, finally gives in to the giggles brought on by a combination of relief and the gentle high from John’s weed. She removes her knee from between his legs -- the source of his panic -- by just collapsing onto his chest. He shifts, wrapping one arm around her and tucking the other behind his head.

“I don’t know if we’re in, like, a video game, or a simulation, or some fuckin’ _Groundhog Day_ situation, or what. You’re like a, a, oh, what’re those birds or whatever that die and then come back to life? With the fire?”

She’s still giggling quietly, head on his chest, eyes already drooping as he warms her. “Phoenix.”

“Hell yeah, you’re like a phoenix! Joe-bro is definitely going down now. You can’t be stopped.” There’s a pause as his fingers tickle against the bare skin of her arm, just at the place where the strap of her tank top is, and she lets the motion lull her to the edge of sleep. “Thirty-two times. Goddamn, shorty, you’re somethin’ else.”

She falls asleep with a smile on her face.

\---

There’s a little dog in John’s bedroom. It’s tiny and white and fluffy, and the minute it sees Mattie walking in, it runs forward with its tail going so fast she thinks its butt might lift right up. The room smells like piss, and she feels a deep pang of guilt -- not for John’s rug, which has obviously been the dog’s bathroom over the last eighteen hours, but because the dog has been stuck in one room without food or water.

It’s wearing a little collar with its rabies license and a little heart-shaped tag that says its name is Moose, and the search for a shower is derailed as she scoops the dog up and takes it outside.

“You got a dog? What the hell you got a dog for?” Sharky’s eating at the long table by the empty fireplace, but he abandons his food when she appears at the foot of the stairs with the little bundle of excited white fur. “John has a dog?”

“Apparently.” Sharky opens the back door for her and follows her into the yard. Moose doesn’t move a single step away before he starts to pee in the grass, and doesn’t even care when Boomer trots up for an investigative sniff. “Poor little guy was in the bedroom upstairs. Did you see dog food in the kitchen, or anything?”

“Lemme check.” He takes another second to stare down at the dog, then he kind of bumps his elbow into hers before he goes back into the house. 

After Moose finishes peeing, he returns Boomer’s attentions, sniffing the new animal until they’ve both decided the other one can be trusted. Curiosity sated, they start to play, Boomer encouraging Moose to chase him around the yard before returning the favor.

It’s cute, watching them run around like this. It’s so much closer to what she thought adult life would be like than what she has right now that an ache settles into her chest and she has to clear her throat to stop herself from crying.

It doesn’t matter.

Moose cuts to the house mid-run, zooming past Mattie and through the still-open door without stopping. She follows, Boomer ignoring her, and finds Sharky in the kitchen spooning food from a can into a little steel bowl. Moose is at Sharky’s feet, standing on his hind legs, spinning in the occasional excited circle. It’s fucking adorable, and Mattie says as much.

Sharky glances at her over his shoulder, grinning. “Thanks, chica. I do my best.”

His smile grows when she snorts and then starts to laugh.

“We’ll have to take Moose into Fall's End,” she says, watching Sharky bend down to put the bowl on the floor. “We can’t leave him here.”

“Whatever you say,” Sharky says. “You’re the boss.”

\---

Being in Fall's End means talking to everyone in Fall's End, and that means chatting with Jerome about the people who need her help around the county. There are even more now than there were before, farmers and just regular citizens who have been holed up this whole time who suddenly need help or have information for her. Some of them are willing to exchange hard-earned supplies for her assistance, and she knows just by the serious expression on Jerome’s face that she can’t say no this time.

The two of them bend over a map of the valley together, tracing out routes with their fingers to see where she should go first and how many people she can help as fast as possible. Sharky leaves them to it as soon as he gets bored, taking Moose with him, and comes back a while later with beers to share and food for all of them.

“Mary May’s gonna watch the dog,” he says, settling sideways on one of the pews so he can stretch his leg out in front of him along the seat. “Didn’t figure it’d be all that useful against the peggies.”

“Thanks, Shark,” she says, smile warm. She turns back to Jerome in time to catch his own soft smile at the exchange. When he catches her eye, he looks down and twists the top off his own drink.

For a while, it’s quiet.

They decide to head up to the Lamb of God episcopal church first, following up on rumors that Grace Armstrong has holed up in it to protect some of the graves from the peggies. Jerome promises to send some resistance members to John’s, thanks Sharky for lunch, and then they go their separate ways.

Sharky keeps up a stream of empty chatter on their way to the other side of the valley, sharing meandering tales from his childhood that are designed to have her laughing as hard as possible. They park a safe distance from the church, around the curve and on the side of the road, but neither of them get out of the car right away.

Mattie has her sleeves rolled up to just below her elbows, the day unseasonably warm, and she stares down at the dark tally marks without speaking for a long moment. When she looks up, Sharky’s already staring at her face, his lips obviously pressed together to keep himself quiet.

“When we go in there, I don’t want you to worry about me. You need to watch out for yourself and stay out of harm’s way, okay? I’ll be fine no matter what -- you won’t.”

“Shor--”

“No.” She holds up one hand to cut off his protests before he can really get started on them, then lowers it and grabs his wrist. “You have to do this. Promise me. I won’t be able to forgive myself if something happens to you.”

He’s frowning hard. “Well, how do you think I’m gonna feel if you die and then stay dead?”

She pushes away the voice inside her that says _if only_ and squeezes his wrist. “I promise you that won’t happen, okay? You believed me last night, you can believe me now.”

She waits until he nods before she releases him and climbs out. Boomer hops out of the backseat and immediately pees on a nearby fence post before dashing off in the direction of the church. Sharky’s muttering something under his breath at a constant rate, but she ignores him because she can’t quite hear all his words -- if he wanted her to know, he’d be talking louder, she’s completely sure.

It only takes a minute of walking before they can hear gunshots, and the pair exchanges a glance before setting out at a jog down the road.

There’s a single peggie truck parked to block traffic, a handful of men ducked behind trees and stone walls closer to the church building, all their fire focused on either one of the headstones or on the church itself. A green laser sight flits over Sharky’s chest, then Mattie’s, then disappears and a woman’s voice comes over the radio. 

“ _You the deputy Jerome was telling me about? I could use your help._ ” A shot rings out then, and the nearest peggie drops dead. 

Sharky and Mattie exchange another look and split up, heading in opposite directions to keep themselves from being surrounded. It works for them, habits accidentally forged as they burned their way from the Henbane and back into the Valley, and the few peggies trying to get to Grace fall pretty fast without causing any more damage than they had before they were interrupted.

Once the yard falls quiet, Mattie climbs up and scoot-walks across the roof of the church to where Grace is sitting in the bell tower. She ignores Sharky’s laughter from below her, focused instead on _getting to Grace_ and _not fucking falling down_ because breaking her neck because she slipped would be the shittiest way she’s died yet. 

Grace watches her with a half-smile and soft eyes. “You got good timing,” she says, shifting back to make room as Mattie crawls wholly inside the tower and sits with her back against the wall as Grace explains what she’s doing.

The peggies are defiling the graves, specifically of the war heroes like Grace’s dad, in an attempt to demoralize them. It’s a pretty damn good attempt, based on how angry Grace is about it, but Mattie doesn’t know how to respond.

She already feels pretty damn demoralized, graves or no graves.

“I’m a good shot, but I need somebody to watch my back.” Grace cocks her head to the side, ear pointed toward the road. “They’ll be here any second.”

Well. It’s not like Mattie can say no to this.

She nods at Grace, crawl-walks back to the ladder, and slides down. Sharky’s there, a grin on his face, and she punches him in the chest hard enough to make him step back in mock agony.

They don’t have time to tease. Some peggie’s truck squeals to a stop, worn out fuckin’ pads announcing their presence to the people they’re trying to kill, and Mattie and Sharky split up again.

There are more peggies this time, absolutely pouring out of the woods and crawling up the hill. Mattie runs out of rifle ammo and ends up using it to smash one peggie in the head as he tries to light a stick of dynamite stuck in the crack of the crypt.

She lights the dynamite herself and tosses it back to the road. One of their trucks explodes in a deeply satisfying ball of fire that catches two of the closest peggies off guard and throws them to the ground.

Grace snipes them both.

The yard of the church is so chaotic that Mattie doesn’t realize she can’t hear Sharky’s taunting calls until after the last peggie falls to her feet with his blood under her nails.

Even though her blood is rushing in her ears, it’s too quiet. It’s too quiet and she can’t see that green hoodie or the bursts of fire from his flamethrower and she can’t hear his laughter or his comments about how her being spattered in peggie gore is (somehow) hot.

She can’t hear anything but Boomer’s sharp bark from the other side of the cemetery. One quick high-pitched call. _Help._

She breaks into a run, hopping over bodies and toppled gravestones in her haste. Cold dread settles in her gut, growing with each footfall, until she knows what she’s going to see before she sees it.

Sharky, on the ground, half-hidden behind one of the larger crypts, slumped to the side. His lips are blue, his face pale, his hoodie soaked through with blood. It’s on the crypt behind him, like he’d been standing against it when he was shot, and when she reaches under his chin to check for a pulse, his eyes stare back at her, empty.

She screams.

Grace is at her side in an instant, checking for a pulse alongside Mattie’s bloody fingers, hissing curses under her breath when she can’t find one either. Mattie pushes the hoodie up over his chest, out of the way, and presses her palms flat against the bullet wounds like she can do anything now to stop the blood.

She told him.

She _told_ him.

“I told him, I told him to be careful, and this is what happened! I should have made him stay behind, why wouldn’t he listen, why--”

“Hey, hey.” Grace’s hands find her face, fingers wrapping around her chin. “You can’t do this here. Help me get him to my truck.”

Mattie nods, blinks the tears from her eyes, and gets her shoulder under Sharky’s arm. Grace helps her lift him, and together they drag his body through the woods around to the back of the church where Grace’s pickup is waiting for them.

They lay him down in the back, and Mattie hesitates by the tailgate as Grace moves to climb in the driver’s seat.

The engine turns over and covers the sharp cry Mattie releases when a bullet hits her shoulder, but it doesn’t cover the sound the tail light makes when it shatters.

White lights surround her and she falls to the ground, vertigo making her retch. She wants to tell Grace to go, to take Sharky back to Fall’s End and leave her here to whatever punishment John has cooked up for her for taking his home and kidnapping his dog, but she can’t make her body obey her.

She loses consciousness just as one of John’s Chosen starts to haul her upright.


	5. Chapter 5

She returns to consciousness in stages. The first thing she’s aware of is her rage, always simmering, now close to the surface. Then, it’s the uncomfortable way she’s sitting, with her hands flat on armrests and her feet all tucked up under the seat in a way she would never sit of her own free will. There’s a throbbing pain in her shoulder, a crick in her neck, something sticky on her skin.

There’s no _black white black_ this time, and she forces herself to draw in a deep, testing breath. It doesn’t hurt, so she does it again, then once more, then she opens her eyes and sits up straight.

She doesn’t recognize where she is -- it’s dark and dank and smells, and the only light source is a red bulb, and there’s an antler chandelier on the ceiling even though she thinks she’s in a bunker -- but she recognizes who she’s with.

There’s John.

And there’s Hudson.

She tries to stand up, to launch herself across the room to tear John’s throat out, but she doesn’t accomplish anything more than making the ropes cut deeper into her wrists and ankles. She tries to call out, but her mouth is taped shut, and her words are lost.

Instead, she screams. She screams, and she screams, and she screams, and she tries to break the rope, and she knows she’s crying tears of rage but she can’t stop them, not even when her vision clears and she can see John smiling at her, his hip leaned against a work table, his arms crossed. He’s just waiting for her to tire herself out, but he doesn’t understand what he’s dealing with.

He doesn’t know.

When she runs out of breath, screams replaced with gasping inhales through her nose because she still can’t get the duct tape off her face, he stands up straight.

He’s smiling, smug, and once he knows he has her attention he starts to fucking whistle, the song just familiar enough to tickle her subconscious, not familiar enough to take away any of the still-swelling anger she feels. Hudson barely even reacts to the sound, just hangs her head and waits like she knows what’s about to come next.

He doesn’t stop whistling as he starts unloading a toolbox, neatly setting out tattoo equipment that makes her skin crawl. She struggles again, overwhelmed with the desire to use the machine on him. She’s seen _Girl with the Dragon Tattoo --_ she knows what can be done with a tattoo gun in the wrong (or the right) hands.

He turns toward her, sets his hip against the table, leans against it casually like they’re in a bar instead of in an underground torture chamber. He smiles, charm turned up to the max, and she knows, deep down, that this is how he got so many people to sell him their land during the years that led up to the cult’s takeover, how he got so many confessions.

Her fury paralyzes her as effectively as the ropes.

“My parents were the first ones to tell me about the Power of Yes,” he says, just like that, like _Power of Yes_ is the title of something that deserves to be capitalized. She tries to bare her teeth to him, but the tape spares him the sight. His smile grows into something sharper, but his voice doesn’t change.

It’s a villain monologue, and she can’t even look away from him to make a face at Hudson.

He details abuse he faced as a child, probably a true story but also one designed to show her she’s not alone in this, that he _understands_ what she’s about to go through, that will make her feel sympathy for him and also go along with his fucking plan. She forces herself to breathe evenly and stare him down. He’s not going to win this.

He’s not going to make it out of here alive.

He moves deeper into her space, and still she stares at him. She doesn’t flinch when he turns the tattoo gun on, doesn’t flinch when he touches her chin with gentle fingers, doesn’t flinch when he rips open the top buttons of her flannel to expose the top of her chest. He doesn’t touch her skin more than is necessary, doesn’t let his gaze wander. It’s like this is a business transaction, even though every movement he makes highlights how much control he has right now.

He cleans her in preparation for the tattoo, cold water soaking the top of her undershirt as he removes sweat and blood and grime. He returns after a moment with a wipe to sterilize the area, all the while giving his carefully-designed speech about why what he’s doing is for her _benefit._

She wants to bite his nose off.

He beams at her like he knows what she’s thinking and steps away, back to the work bench, picks up a screwdriver, and starts gesticulating with it like it’s going to help him make his point better.

“I’m going to teach you courage,” he says. “Teach you how to say ‘yes’ so you can confront your weakness, confront your sins!”

He’s working himself up, pacing, making bigger gestures. Hudson is watching him closely, body held still, and the tension in Mattie’s stomach ratchets tighter. How is she going to protect both of them if she can’t even get loose? 

“You will swim across an ocean of pain and emerge… free.” Yelling, he sounds just like the pastor of the little church her daddy always took her to, where she sat in her hand-me-down dresses at the end of the row with her brothers in their suits as the preacher screamed about hellfire from the pulpit, and she has to blink away surprising tears at the memory. He sees her react, lowers his voice as he walks closer, wipes one tear free even as he presses the sharp end of the screwdriver deep into the soft underside of her chin. “For only then can you begin to atone.”

She blinks at him, and he smiles. He holds their positions for a heartbeat, then another, then he walks back and leans casually against the workbench like he never worked himself up. Somehow, the calm is worse than the yelling, and she can feel a bead of sweat drip from her scalp down the side of her neck.

“So. Who wants to go first?” He doesn’t look away from her, doesn’t turn back to look at Hudson behind him even as Mattie does. Hudson has her chin high but her eyes squeezed closed, fingers dug tight into the arms of her chair. “Hm? Which one?”

Joey has been living through this while Mattie has been running around the county. 

Mattie can live through it now.

She meets John’s eyes again and nods, fast, so he won’t think she’s afraid. His smile would be beautiful anywhere else, but here and now it makes nausea swirl inside her. He steps back into her space, leans down so they’re eye to eye, and says, “You won’t regret this,” like that isn’t the biggest lie he’s ever told. “I promise.” He holds her gaze again, then stands up and moves over to Joey, his professional-grade voice back in play. “Now, before we begin, I think it’s only proper that Deputy Hudson goes back to her room. Confessions are supposed to be _private,_ after all.”

He kicks something loose under her chair and pushes it forward. It rolls ahead of him, clicking on the grated floor, until Mattie and Joey are face-to-face. 

The extra attention is too much for Joey, and she’s crying before he stops pushing her forward. She’s struggling, eyes wide, the makeup she’d worn to arrest Joseph smeared all down her face, covering bruises Mattie assumes came from her _confessions._ She locks eyes with Mattie and shakes her head, over and over, begging as hard as she can without words.

She wants to protect Mattie, but all Mattie wants to do is protect her too.

John shushes her like he would a baby, soft _shhs_ followed by, “I’m not here to take your life, I’m here to give it to you.” Joey just shakes her head harder, and John turns to Mattie, taking her shoulders in his hands. She leans back to watch his face, trying desperately to ignore Joey shaking her head behind him. “I’m going to open you and pour your worst fears inside, and as you choke--” his hands, creeping slowly up her neck, wrap around her throat and _squeeze_ just as he had by the water, only holding tighter when Joey wails behind him. “--your sins will reveal themselves. Only then will you truly understand the Power of Yes.”

He steps away and Mattie gasps for breath, tears of pain this time escaping against her will. Joey is still struggling, but John looks positively delighted as he says, “Be right back!” like this is fun for him. He pushes Joey out of the room, and Mattie sits still as the door clangs shut behind him.

She’s _fucked._

If she stays here, John will come back and torture her in the name of “saving her soul” or whatever bullshit, and she’ll end up tattooed all to fuck and, despite the way he’d cleaned her, probably with hepatitis or something. If she leaves, just walks out the front door no matter how many times she dies on the way, then he’ll take his explosive anger out on Joey. 

Joey’s already been through enough.

The third option is to somehow break out of the chair and then… find wherever Joey is and take her right out of the bunker, back to Fall’s End or to the jail, get her out of John’s clutches and worry about everything else later. If she can kill John on her way out, then… well, it’s less murder and more about stopping a war, isn’t it?

He’d kill her without a second thought if Joseph didn’t want her alive.

Mind made up, she starts to struggle out of her bindings. The rope cuts into her wrists, burns and twists, and after a particularly hard yank she can feel blood welling up. She jerks her feet up, trying to pull her knees to her chest with the protection of her jeans between her skin and the rope, but it doesn’t do much more than make the chair shudder in whatever is holding it in place.

This isn’t working, and the desperation makes her grind her teeth together and struggle harder until -- _clunk_ \-- she shifts the chair far enough that it comes loose from what was holding it down. She’s still attached to it, but now she can scoot around if she uses her toes just right, so… she does. She wiggles her toes in her boots until she gets some momentum going, and then she’s at the other exit and staring down a flight of stairs.

She’s still tied to the chair, but maybe…

She tips down the stairs sideways, and she realizes her feet have come free half a second before her temple makes contact with the sharp edge of the bottom step and pain blocks everything else out.

_White. Black. Red. Her whole head aches like it’s been crushed on one side, like the impact at the bottom of the stairs was enough to really, really kill her this time._

_If she never has to see this in-between place again, that would be fine._

_She died trying._

Try again.

_White. Black. Red. White._

She’s _fucked._

She’s back in the chair, hands and feet bound, the damn thing stuck in its contraption. She can hear the door clicking closed behind her, John just now leaving with Hudson.

This time, she doesn’t hesitate. She starts to shake herself free right away, gets it after only a couple of tries, and at least if she dies again and wakes up here she’ll have even more of a head start. 

This time, she scoots herself right up to the tool bench to see if there’s anything she can use to cut herself free, but the problem is that she can’t do that with her mouth and the rope on her hands is so tight that, even though she hasn’t directly tried to yank herself free, she’s bleeding just from getting the chair to move. 

Okay. Well.

Maybe she won’t die on the stairs this time.

It takes her three deep breaths to work up the courage to pitch herself backward this time, the memory of the brain injury still painfully fresh, but then she sucks in a fourth breath, holds it, and shoves herself backward. The chair breaks on impact, freeing her legs first and then her arms, and she crouches on the lower landing to pull the tape off her mouth and catch her breath.

Good.

This is good.

She can work with this.

\---

By the time she finds the room where John is keeping Hudson, she’s died four more times, and she’s going to get to add a tidy group of tally marks to her arm when she finds another sharpie. She has a stolen pistol in one hand and a chipped baseball bat in the other, and she’s covered in blood from peggies and her own injuries.

John is grinning at her from the other side of a locked door with a view port, looking equal parts smug and pleased and manic, and his voice filters to her through a nearby speaker as he begins to speak.

“I know your sin,” he says, and now the smugness makes sense. He’s not pleased she’s escaped and killed his people, he’s pleased that he’s figured her out. It makes her anger spike higher, but he doesn’t seem to care. “It drives you. Every thought. Every action. Your sin… is Wrath.”

She bares her teeth to him again, like she can reach through the reinforced window separating them and tear his throat out with her teeth, then she takes a step back from the window, fingers tightening on her pistol, as his smile grows. He doesn’t seem put off by her display of Wrath -- he seems pleased by it.

“I’ll indulge you,” he says, like he’s okay with what she’s been doing, like it’s up to him how she acts. “Become Wrath. Let it fill your body and consume your soul, because in the end… you’ll still be empty. And I’ll be waiting right here.” He glances behind him, making the motion obvious, theatrical, and she takes a step back and lifts the gun before she has time to think through it, becoming Wrath just like he said. “We both will.”

He lifts his brows when he sees the gun, but nothing happens when she pulls the trigger. She’s out of ammo, the gun clicking uselessly, and he laughs when she just throws the whole thing at him. It crashes into the window and then falls to the floor, and he’s practically skipping away to grab the back of Hudson’s chair to pull her deeper into the bunker. He waves, amused, and she would _swear_ she can hear him laughing at her.

Fuck him.

Fuck _him._

A vent hisses to life next to her, filling the air with the sickly smell of bliss, and the speaker system announces the bunker door is about to close.

She starts to run.

\---

She finds herself on the Ryes’ doorstep before she stops to think about where she’s going, Dutch’s words still ringing in her head. _Lure him out. Burn his whole operation to the ground._ She sure fucking can, but not today.

She’s shaking and sick, her shoulder still bleeding where she was shot and the rest of her scraped and sticky and covered in things she doesn’t want to think about. There’s bliss in her hair that makes her dizzy if she turns her head too fast, and thinking about what happened to Sharky and Grace makes her want to sit right in the middle of the road and never get up again. She would rather be stuck in the _black white black_ than face what happened today.

Nick opens the door about fifteen seconds after she rings the bell, and he stares at her for a full three more before he starts swearing and tugs her into the safety of his living room with his hand on her elbow. She’s pretty sure he’s going to let her go as soon as the door’s closed, but she collapses against him and starts to sob before he gets the chance to let her go.

“Oh, uh, okay,” he says, and then he’s awkwardly patting her back as she clings to him and probably gets snot and blood all over his shirt. “Hey, Kim? Deputy’s here.” His voice cracks a bit, and Mattie just cries harder.

There’s a longer gap before Kim appears, but Mattie can hear the woman sighing before her smaller hands are next to Nick’s. She lets herself be moved, sat down on the couch and gathered against Kim’s side since there’s not really room against her front, and she keeps crying. Nick disappears, his footsteps echoing off deeper into the house, and Mattie can’t really blame him.

“I’m really so-sorry,” Mattie sobs, hiccuping in the middle. Kim just shushes her and rubs at her back, heedless of the grime. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

Kim sighs again, hand still rubbing, and they sit there until Mattie’s tears dry up and leave her feeling nothing but bone-deep weariness and a full-body tremor she can’t quite get rid of. When she sits up, embarrassed, Kim just takes her hand and squeezes.

“What happened?”

Mattie laughs, but it’s wet and unhappy sounding. “John.”

Nick reappears with a glass of water, hands it to her, then sits in the armchair like he wants to be close but not so close she’ll reach for him again. “You hurt?”

She shrugs her good shoulder. “I mean. Yeah. Could be worse, though.”

Kim and Nick exchange a look, and then he’s up and leaving the house without another word. Mattie looks at Kim for an explanation, and almost can’t bear the look of sympathy on Kim’s face.

“Come on, you can take a shower and take a nap, and I’ll wash your clothes for you.”

Mattie starts to protest, but Kim waves her words away and then pushes on Mattie’s leg and the arm of the couch to shove herself to the edge, then uses the arm of the couch and the coffee table to shove herself upright. She looks pleased with herself when she turns back around, and Mattie stands with much more ease.

“I don’t want to impose.”

Kim just shrugs. “The number of times Nick’s buddies have crashed on the couch after drinking too much? We’re used to it. At least this is for a good cause.” She gives Mattie a little smile, enough for Mattie to know the offer is genuine, and then Mattie is following Kim up the stairs at her slow pace, trying to pretend like she’s not worried Kim’s going to fall down the stairs.

There’s one bathroom on the second floor, and Kim promises to find some clean clothes for Mattie while she’s showering. Mattie leaves the door unlocked and removes her clothes, grimacing at the pain that radiates from her battered body and the stiff feeling of dried blood on her skin.

The tally marks on her arm stare back at her, too few now, fading from age and washing. They damn her, this woman who can know no consequences while her friends die for her, while they’re in danger by her very presence.

The water in the shower is too cold, and she shivers without touching the knob.

If the only thing keeping her going now, with her heart hollowed out and left on the bloody ground around Lamb of God church, is rage… then she’s going to feel rage.

She’ll show John what Wrath really looks like.

\---

It says something about her time fighting the cult that the sound of tires on the gravel of Nick and Kim’s driveway sends a thrill of panic through her. She crashed hard after her shower, wearing some of Nick’s clothes since Kim’s were too small, and she doesn’t really know what time it is or who could possibly be visiting. She just knows the last time she was at the Ryes and heard tires on the gravel, the peggies were after Nick’s plane.

She’s on her feet by the window with her pistol in her hand before she’s had a single conscious thought, peering around the curtains to see how many people are outside.

“Whoa, Dep.” Nick’s hand closes around her elbow, pinning her gun hand in place at her side. “Who’s there?”

He leans around her to look through the window, his presence a comforting one against her side even as she worries about him being so close to the potential threat. It isn’t until he huffs a laugh and releases her that the tension melts from her body and she’s able to fully process the fact that the old SUV in the drive isn’t peggie-white, doesn’t have the emblem on the side, it’s just… green, and muddy, and there’s a familiar looking man climbing out of the driver’s seat.

Mattie leaves her gun by the window and is out the front door before Nick can catch up with her, and she bursts into tears when she hears Sharky’s cheerful, “What’s up, shorty?”

She barrels right into his chest, and he catches her with his hands on her elbows, a confused sound coming out of him in place of words. She yanks free of his grip, blinking hard to clear her vision, hiccuping sobs as she shoves her hands under his hoodie and tank top to touch his bare chest.

He flinches away from her, chuckling in a way that should tell her he’s uncomfortable, and manages, “Jesus, Dep. We got an audience.”

His chest is firm, covered in hair, muscles jumping under her touch, but… it’s whole. The bullet holes from Lamb of God church are missing, gone, not even a scar to show where they had been. It’s like the whole goddamn situation never even happened, like the memory of it was washed from the face of the earth and only left living inside Mattie’s head.

She only stops when Sharky’s hands cup her face, his thumbs tracing her cheekbones like he’s trying to make sure she’s okay too. His fingertip against her healing bruise causes a spark of pain, but she doesn’t pull away. She leans into it instead, blinking up at him, ignoring the quiet sounds of speaking behind her up at the house.

“What happened?”

She draws in a shaky breath. “You died. You got shot in the chest, and you died, and I couldn’t do anything because the peggies took me to John’s bunker.”

“You okay? He mark you?”

She just blinks up at him. “You’re the one who died. What’s the last thing you remember?”

He releases her before he answers her, but she doesn’t move away as he looks up at the sky to think. “Uhh, well, we were makin’ John’s life hell down here, and then… you were gonna go to the church for Jerome… and Mary May took Moose…” He pauses, frowns, looks back down at her. “I was back at Boshaw Manor, but I don’t remember driving back or anything. Auntie wanted me to bring some stuff to Kim’n’Nick for the new baby, so… I’m here.”

Mattie’s smile is watery but wide, and she barks out a relieved laugh. “So you… you can’t die either?”

He shrugs. “Dunno. Don’t want to test it out, though. You wearing Nick’s clothes, or…?”

She looks down at herself, at the too-big t-shirt and sweatpants, then quirks her eyebrow at him. “Sure looks like it. Kim’s washing my other stuff for me. You… you sure you’re okay?”

“Right as rain,” he says, shrugging again. He takes a step back and reaches through his open passenger side window to pull out a box. He shuffles on his feet when she doesn’t move, doesn’t give him enough space to move past her into the house.

She stares at him for another long moment before she nods and steps aside. “I’m glad, Sharky.”

\---

Each outpost she frees from cultist hands makes the angry knot in her chest wind just a little tighter. Each home belonged to someone who was hurt by the cult -- someone who was helped by them at some point, probably, and then later realized what that help cost. Someone who’s now dead, or worse, because Mattie wasn’t fast enough to save them.

She works herself ragged, not caring about how tired she gets or how injured. It doesn’t matter, ultimately. She comes back to life if she makes a mistake, and she has Sharky at her side to remind her to slow down, eat, drink water, or take a nap when she starts getting too woozy, and she loves him for it.

Dutch’s suggestion to burn John’s whole operation to the ground is a good one, and honestly it’s the only idea she has. Sharky’s happy to help, and Nick and Kim are more than happy to offer what support they can. Nick is constantly offering to take _Carmina_ up or to let Mattie take her ( _not_ Sharky) around to destroy John’s properties with more efficiency.

She declines each time, says she’ll let him know when she finds something she needs him for, not wanting to take him away from Kim for that long or put him in danger. John has his Chosen looking for her in their own planes, and she’s pretty sure they’d shoot _Carmina_ out of the sky without asking questions first. Anyway, she’s doing just fine with Sharky’s flamethrower and the little remote explosives she’s taken to creating and putting at the base of silos and detonating from a safe distance, when she’s sure there aren’t any innocent civilians around.

It’s not until after they’ve taken the last of John’s outposts in the region, giving it back to the original owners who were simply biding their time until someone who was more qualified was able to help them, that Mattie comes up with one last idea to get John’s attention. She and Sharky are sitting shoulder to shoulder against the night chill, sharing their last cigarette. He’s quiet for once, staring at the campfire while she studies the skyline like she always does.

Each pass of the smoke back and forth makes her smile a little more, makes her want to put her head against his shoulder and just sink her weight into his. It feels weirdly homey now, even though the apartment she’d been renting has burned down and they’re sitting on a log in the middle of the woods.

“Oh, shit.” She shakes herself out of the dangerous train of thought and sits up straight. Sharky flinches when she speaks, like he’s surprised, but she finishes her thought before he has time to otherwise react. “You know how Nick’s always trying to get me to take the _Carmina_ up?”

“Uhh. Yeah? Even though you don’t like heights?”

She flashes him a smile, catching him already looking at her.

“Let’s use it to really fuck up John’s day.” She points up at the sky, near the edge of the treeline, where the top of the giant fucking YES sign is barely visible.

It only takes Sharky a second to pick up what she’s putting down. He whistles low through his teeth. “Hell yeah, shorty. That’s the best idea you’ve had all week.”

\---

Nick lets them borrow the plane without argument, though he’s very specific that only Mattie’s allowed in the pilot’s seat. He makes sure the fuel tank is full, the ammo fully stocked (why his cropduster needed a machine gun is something Mattie doesn’t understand but is thankful for), and then sends them on their way with a cheerful “Good luck!”

Flying isn’t as awful this time as it was every time before. She doesn’t have to fight vertigo or sweating hands or nausea, and she has Sharky’s chatter in her ear to distract her. He talks about growing up in the county, recalling tales that she doesn’t necessarily need to know (like about the second time he fingered a girl) but that make her laugh anyway.

The sign is constructed out of sturdier stuff than she thought it would be, and it takes two passes to knock down the first bit of metal. The bottom half of the E crumbles and Sharky cheers so loud Mattie can barely hear Dutch come over the radio to cheer her on too.

She keeps making passes on the sign until the last bit crumbles to the ground. The only thing left is the metal supports, and those won’t be easy to see from far away unless the light catches them just right. It feels _good_ to have ruined John’s sign, like it’s the last bit of the puzzle she needed to do to get his attention. She should have started here, burned the sign down and dragged the supports right out of the stone, taken the scrap back into the valley for the Resistance to repurpose.

She’s barely surprised when her radio clicks on, the sound of John’s voice oozing through the speaker enough to shut Sharky up and make Mattie bare her teeth at the sky.

“When this little uprising is over, you'll rebuild that piece by piece,” he says, voice carrying through the exact same Wrath he’s found in Mattie. “You'll work until your fingers are worn to the bone. And when you're done I'll bury you beneath it.”

She exhales sharply, turns the plane back toward Nick’s with one eye on the fuel gauge. It took longer to bring the sign down than she expected, but it seems to be okay. Just because she’ll wake up after a plane crash doesn’t mean she wants to see what it feels like.

The radio clicks off, then back on when she doesn’t respond. “Your actions have consequences, Deputy,” he says, and the sudden calmness makes her blood run cold. “I’ve gathered all your friends here in Fall’s End to atone for your sins. You’re welcome to join us! After all… if it weren’t for you, they wouldn’t be in this predicament. This is your last chance to say _yes_ , Deputy. Don’t be late.”

“Shit,” Sharky says, voice subdued. 

Mattie sighs sharply. “I’m going to kill that fucker with my bare hands.”

After another moment, she silently banks a little to the north, heading to Fall’s End.

She’s going to kill him.


	6. Chapter 6

“I got a sneakin’ suspicion,” Sharky says as they walk into the main intersection of Fall’s End to find it absolutely abandoned, “that the peggies ain’t takin’ too kindly to our escapades.”

Mattie makes a little humming noise as she looks at someone’s empty dresser at the corner. “What gives you that idea, Shark?”

He clutches his shotgun a little tighter, keeps swiveling his head back and forth to see what’s waiting for them. With the way Boomer’s trotting happily between them, though, Mattie knows there aren’t any peggies nearby.

“Just a wild guess,” he mutters, and moves in a little closer.

The only building in Fall’s End that looks like it has people inside is the church, and that’s only because John’s really fucked it up. Mattie and Sharky stand on the other side of the street and stare at everything: the bliss flowers, the arch, the crows nailed to the siding, the _literal_ red carpet that John’s rolled out for her.

“Yeah, that’s real creepy,” Sharky says. “Told you John wants to fuck you.”

Mattie elbows him instead of responding, but she has to admit the decorations make the church look a little… matrimonial. 

Finally, she draws in a deep steadying breath. “Fortunately, he’s not on my to-fuck list,” she says, and then she forces out the rest of her thought before Sharky can ask who _is_ on the list, because that’s not really something she’s ready to think about when facing a recaptured Fall’s End and a church full of hostages. “Stay out here, stay hidden, and if you see anything weird or hear anything weird, call for backup, okay?”

“Dep, I don’t--”

“I know you don’t want to wait, but I need you to be able to call for help.” She turns to him, tugs on his sleeve a little. “Can I count on you?”

He sighs, he fidgets, he looks away, and then finally he sighs again and makes eye contact. “You can count on me. Just… just be safe, okay?”

She winks at him with levity she doesn’t feel. “Always.”

They bump fists once before she squares her shoulders and passes under the arch to get to the church. She can hear low murmuring inside, but she’s still surprised when she pulls the door open and a peggie slams the butt of his rifle into her forehead.

\---

It says something about how much Hope County has changed over the last few weeks that hunting a human man across the mountain doesn’t feel wrong. Instead, she’s painfully calm, laser-focused on finding John before he can regain consciousness and run back to Joseph.

She saw him jump out of his plane just before she jumped from hers. She saw Nick make one last strafing run, aiming bullets from _Carmina_ toward his already limp body and his parachute. She doesn’t blame Nick for that, not after what happened in the church, not after all the bad blood between John and Nick specifically, and really it means her next step should be a little easier.

When she finally finds John, the front of her tank and the remains of her flannel stained with blood from her angry WRATH tattoo, he’s still stubbornly trying to get away even though his injuries are almost overwhelming him. His coat with the little planes is torn, covered in blood and mud and who knows what else, and the sight is enough to make her pause when he looks up at her.

“It isn’t too late,” he says, trying to charm her until the end. “You can still say Yes, save yourself, come with us into Eden’s Gate.”

He coughs, and it’s bloody. He wipes at his lips and slips in the mud, landing hard on his hip as his feet slide out from under him. He groans and doesn’t try to get up, just takes deep, rasping breaths.

She holsters her pistol and walks over to kneel at his side. He blinks at her, hands in his lap, and she sighs, her Wrath warring with pity at his obvious pain.

“It’s not too late for _you_ ,” she says, finally, not really believing the words or thinking he’ll accept them, but she makes the offer anyway. “I can take you to town, get you medical care. You’ll be under arrest, but it’ll save your life.”

He laughs at her, a full laugh, and sprays blood into the air when it fades off into another wet cough. “You say you want to save my life, but you would damn it at the same time. What if Joseph is right? Did you ever stop to think about that? Everyone thinks he’s crazy, but he’s not.”

Okay. Well. She gave him a chance.

She loses patience, that little blossom of pity finally choked out by her blooming anger, and she reaches out to grab for his key anyway. He grabs her wrist once her fingers are around it, holding on with enough strength to bruise if she pulls away too hard.

They’re at a stalemate. She won’t let go of the key; he won’t let go of her.

“Look around you. This world is on the brink. You can feel it in your _bones._ Look at the headlines! Look who’s in charge!” He laughs again, coughs, then somehow tightens his grip even more. “You want this key because you think you’re saving people, but they are _already safe._ We had a _plan_.”

His breath catches in his throat, his eyebrows drawing together, and even this close and with him this hurt, she can’t tell how much is him being serious and how much is him acting to draw her in. She pulls him closer with the key and puts her free hand on his cheek without thinking about it, not sure what to do when he leans into the touch.

“You don’t understand. You don’t believe! You don’t _care!_ ” He pushes her away with both hands, and she slips in the mud and falls to a seat next to him.

The cord holding the key around his neck breaks, and the only thing holding them together is his death grip on her wrist.

She bares her teeth to him, the instinctive warning sign of her anger that she doesn’t know how to stop.

He doesn’t care. He just takes another rattling breath, and this close she can see his eyes starting to lose their focus. He’s not quite looking at her anymore; he’s almost looking through her when he says, “May God have mercy on your soul.”

His hand on her wrist goes slack; his fingers slip away and he falls to the side, breathless, lifeless, empty before her as though he never had any life in him at all.

She pushes two fingers against his still-warm skin, expertly searching for a pulse.

She doesn’t find one.

He’s gone.

She could -- she should, according to the law and her training and the gut instinct that drove her to become an EMT and then a police officer -- perform CPR, radio for help, get his heart beating, save his life, make him answer for his crimes. Her eyes prick, burn with unshed tears that she refuses to let escape. She will _not_ cry over this man.

He doesn’t deserve her tears. He doesn’t deserve her _pity_ or her _grief._

She has the key. She needs to get Joey.

Her hands are shaking when she pulls her radio to her mouth, her voice steady as she says, “You still up there, Nick? Have time for one more run with me? Over.”

It only takes a moment for his voice to come back. “ _Just tell me where. Over._ ”

\---

Sneaking into John’s bunker is easier than sneaking out of it. She still gets horribly turned around and dies three times, all in different spots, and it’s not until she’s made it into the bowels of the bunker where someone (she assumes John) has corpses strung up and turned into gruesome sculptures like he watched one too many episodes of the _Hannibal_ TV series and decided that was the kind of aesthetic he needed in his bunker that she finds what she’s looking for.

Joey Hudson, Hope County native, Mattie’s supervising officer and friend… already free, moving under her own power, and trying to gut Mattie with a knife probably liberated from the first peggie who got too close to her.

If she wasn’t afraid for her life, she’d be _so_ proud.

They struggle, Mattie simply trying to keep the knife away from her skin, not even attempting to disarm Joey in case that made her lose it even more. How long has she been down here, killing peggies one at a time as they got too close? Running on adrenaline and nothing else, praying for John to come back so she could slit his throat?

Mattie manages to gasp out Joey’s name, one more time, and that seems like enough to pull her attention back to the present, to Rook’s ruined flannel, to her _face_ , and the fight just wilts out of her.

“Rook? It’s you? Oh, God...” Joey sits back, already starting to shake, and Mattie follows her to take the knife away. “I didn’t think you’d come back,” she says, voice shaking, and just that is enough to make exhausted tears come to Mattie’s eyes.

“Oh, Jo…” Mattie reaches out, following her instinctual need to pull Joey into her arms, but Joey flinches away.

“Something started _happening_ ,” she says instead, bracing her hands against the metal floor like she’s going to push herself to her feet. “All the, all the _fucking peggies_ started scrambling around, all the doors started closing and locking us inside,” she gasps for breath, the terror flooding back to her like it’s still happening and she’s not on the verge of freedom. “I thought I was gonna be down here forever…”

She gasps again and a tear slips free despite her obvious effort to hold it in, and Mattie reaches out for her again, tears of sympathy and rage and guilt welling in her own eyes. Joey allows the contact for as long as it takes her to catch her breath, just a moment before she pulls away and uses Mattie’s shoulder to push herself up to a standing position.

Mattie follows, hands out to catch Joey in case she trips, but Joey shakes off that attention too.

“It’s all because of _him_ ,” Joey says, voice trembling but this time in rage instead of fear. She points her knife at one of the portraits -- honest to God _portraits_ \-- of Joseph that dot the bunker, this one in the lap of a dead peggie. “That fucking, that fucking piece of _shit_!” 

Mattie has to cover her mouth to stop from crying out when Joey picks the portrait up and slams it into the floor, shattering the glass with a grunt of effort. She can’t stop the tears that come from seeing her friend so hurt, can’t stop the flinch that shakes her whole body when Joey falls to her knees by the broken frame.

“He would come down here, and he would just stand there and watch.” Joey’s voice breaks, and she shakes her head a little as if to clear it as Mattie forces herself closer, hand dropping to her side and a deep discomfort radiating from her chest. She wants to gather Joey up in her arms, but that’s not what she needs right now.

She just needs Mattie to listen.

“We were begging for mercy,” she says, glancing up at Mattie as her voice breaks again -- not into tears this time, but into laughter, “and he would just fucking watch.”

She laughs until the laughter turns into a sob, and she shoves the portrait away. Mattie tries once more to comfort, putting her hand on Joey’s shoulder, and this time… it seems to finally work. Joey takes a steadying breath, pulling her emotions back in check with the same determination that makes her such a good deputy, and starts to push herself upright.

“The others… there were other people down here with me. We’re going to get them out.”

She’s so strong, so fierce, and Mattie remembers the woman she met on her first official day with the department, the woman who had teased her and made fun of Staci and offered to take the lead on Mattie’s training since Mattie should learn from a _real_ cop.

Mattie finds herself nodding, because she can’t say no.

\---

Mattie slips away from the party as soon as she can, a little buzzed, sore all over, the memory of how far gone Joey was rattling unpleasantly in the back of her skull. The music is loud, but the cold night air dulls it as the door to the Spread Eagle swings shut behind her. She exhales sharply and rests her beer bottle on the porch railing while she pats her pockets down for a cigarette.

“I got you, chica.”

Sharky appears at her side, grim faced, a fresh pack in his outstretched hand. She swipes it from him and leans against his side as she pulls the cellophane off and waits, trusting, for his lighter to appear in front of her. Tears fill her eyes when it does, and she blinks hard to send them away.

This is a time for celebration, not for tears.

“What number you up to now?” He holds her left wrist in one hand and pushes at her long sleeve with the other, trying to expose enough of her skin to see how many black marks now mar it. 

She allows the touch even though she knows he has no chance of seeing enough, enjoying his warm, dry hands on her skin. She wants to sink into the touch, let it consume her, warm her all over so she can think about something other than the shit show that is Hope County. She takes a deep drag on her cigarette instead, then turns her head to the side to exhale two lungfuls of smoke and poison.

“An even forty.”

He stops pushing at her sleeve and just holds her instead, waiting until she looks up at him. He's already staring at her, eyes boring into her soul, and she falls silent and still under his gaze.

He sighs. He doesn't like whatever he sees. “C’mon, there's a fire over here’ll warm you up.” He turns but doesn't release her as he starts to move, dragging her through the cheery streets of Falls End. Everyone is out celebrating, and here she is letting Sharky boss her around because she can't bear the happiness for another second.

True to Sharky's word, there is a small (and actually fairly well contained) fire in the backyard of an empty house. There are two chairs facing the flames, a cooler between them. Her breath catches in her throat -- he _planned_ this.

He set this up; he started the fire, he found and moved the chairs, he filled the cooler… He found a fresh pack of cigarettes because he knew she'd be out and would want one after everything, even though she's constantly complaining about her own bad habit.

He releases her wrist and sits in one of the chairs, and she floats along behind him and sits in the other. She can't feel the cold of the night air, just the warmth of the fire and the warmth of his gaze on her face.

“You do all this for me, Boshaw?”

He ducks his head as he's digging through the cooler, embarrassed, and doesn't quite meet her eyes when he hands her a beer. “I just thought you'd like some peace’n quiet. You're, uh, you're kind of my best friend. You're doing all this for all of us, and someone has to look out for you too.”

It's too much. It's too much. She can't handle this.

“You're still gonna be my friend after all this, right? It was kinda lonely without you.”

Okay. Okay. This is enough.

She puts her unopened beer on the ground and flicks her half-smoked cigarette into the fire. Sharky lifts his brows at her, but doesn't have time to say another word before she climbs into his lap and presses her lips to his.

He gasps and grabs for her waist as his lips part, and she matches his expression by opening her lips too. She sinks into him, into his warmth and gentle caresses, so at odds with how he faces every other situation. He slides his hands up her back, tickling her spine, until he can bury his fingers in her hair. 

He pulls her away, just enough to break their kiss, and she rests her forehead against his. She rests her hands on his shoulders, fingers slowly curling into the soft material of his hoodie.

“You… uh, you feelin’ okay?” His voice is low and hoarse, and she shivers before she can repress the urge.

“Mhm…” She trails off and sits up, but she doesn’t let go of his hoodie. “I just… you’re so sweet, Sharky, and I…” She bites her lip, suddenly uncertain even though he’s still holding her just as tight as he was when she climbed in his lap. “I couldn’t _not_ kiss you.”

He’s staring at her lips. “Oh. Uh. Yeah. Okay. Why, uh, why though?” 

She licks her lips and he tightens his grip on her hair, just a bit, like he can't help it. “I wanted to.”

He blinks and looks back up at her eyes, and her breath catches in her throat when she sees the firelight dancing orange across his skin. 

“You did?”

“Yeah. I mean, I _do_ .” She releases his hoodie and slides her hands up to cup his jaw. Her fingers rasp through his days-old stubble and tilt his neck up just a little. “You're great, Sharky. You care about me so _goddamn_ much, and I…” She barely stops herself from saying too much, from scaring him with how deep her affections are already running, how fast she’s fallen in love. “Can I kiss you more?”

He nods, fast, like he's not sure if she’s going to change her mind or not, and then she’s kissing him again and it feels so good she's not sure what to do with herself besides lean into it.

It’s everything she could have asked for, better than she ever expected it to be. His body is warm against hers, his kisses eager, his tongue almost delicate where it brushes against hers. She leans into him, settles more heavily into his lap, and he moves his hands down her back to her hips and back up, slow soothing motions that make her melt.

He's holding her like she's the most precious thing he's ever touched, even when she weaves her fingers through his hair and tugs. He moans, a quiet wounded noise into her mouth that she happily swallows, and then she pulls away just enough to slip her hands under his hoodie so she can touch his warm skin.

It feels right, being curled up around him, the heat of him against her front contrasting with the heat of the fire against her back. His goatee scratches her chin, his callouses tickle her waist as he mirrors her and slips his hands under her shirt. She moans into his mouth and he echoes her, a feedback loop of pleasure building between them until she has to tear her mouth free to catch her breath.

Sharky doesn’t let her go far, pulling her hips closer to his and moving his mouth across her jaw and down her neck. He catches her skin with his teeth, tugging with just the barest of pressure before moving on to the next spot, smiling against her when she squirms in his grip and lets out a too-loud moan.

He kisses back up to her ear, licks the spot just underneath it, tries to whisper without really lowering his voice at all, “You’re so fuckin’ hot. I’ve been thinkin’ about this for weeks.” He nips at her earlobe, tugs a little, groaning right back at her when she shivers.

“Really? Weeks?” The arms of the chair are pinching her knees, making her thighs hurt, but she moves her fingers up to tangle in his hair. She tugs, too hard, and his hips fruitlessly jerk up into hers when she pulls his face away so she can see him. Interesting. “We’ve only been hanging out for _weeks_.”

He shrugs and grins at her, smile lopsided and beautiful. There’s no embarrassment in his gaze. “I guess I just know what I like.” He tries to kiss her again, but she won’t let him move. He shivers and bites his lower lip, and she smiles.

She can work with that.

“And what do you like?”

He doesn’t hesitate, the truth slipping from his lips with ease. “You.”

She can’t stop herself from kissing him again, and she doesn’t want to. He wraps both his arms around her, holding her close as his tongue slides against hers, the kiss deep and wet and intimate. He holds her as tight as she’s holding him, gives as good as he gets, until she feels like she’s going to die if she doesn’t feel his skin against hers.

“Sharky, do you, _mphm--_ ” He kisses her again mid-sentence, cutting her off, and she laughs against his mouth, too delighted to remember anything else. “C’mon, baby. Where are you staying in town?”

He groans and nuzzles against her neck, unwilling at first to break away to answer her, but finally he sits back and takes a deep breath of the crisp night air. “There’s, uh, there’s some empty houses around the corner? I put our stuff in one of them.”

“Want to show me?”

He nods, then, and she pushes herself off of him, grunting when her legs unfold from under her weight. She picks up the cooler of beer and waits until he stands too, trying and failing to hide her smirk when he carefully shifts his weight from side to side and tucks one hand into the deep pocket of his jeans to adjust his erection.

She slips her hand into his free one before he can get embarrassed, chewing on the inside of her lip as she waits for him to lead her in the right direction. He does, but not before leaning down to grab one more kiss from her. He’s not so tall that she has to reach up on her tiptoes, but she does have to tilt her neck back to get the angle right; she’s suddenly sure, standing here in the middle of Fall’s End, that she should have started kissing him when they were still in the Henbane, back when he sat on the floor and held her hand while she cried in her sleep.

He pulls away when he remembers what he’s supposed to be doing, tightens his hold on her hand like he’s afraid she’s going to change her mind before they make it to the house he’s claimed on the edge of town. She vaguely remembers the family who used to live here, good people she hopes made it out of the county before everything went to shit, but she tries not to think about them as she leaves the cooler on their kitchen counter and lets Sharky pull her up a winding and narrow set of stairs to get to the upper floor.

The lights are already on like Sharky’s been here and left, and she has enough time to notice old sheets in the corner and fresh ones on the bed before Sharky pulls her close and tilts her face up to his with her jaw in his hand. She smiles up at him, slipping her free hand under his hoodie to press against the warmth of his stomach. He twitches under her touch, flexing a little, and her smile grows.

“Were you, uh, hoping for something here?” She’s teasing, she always teases, but he just glances over her shoulder at the bed before his cheeks flare red. 

“No, uh, this was for you? I was gonna sleep down the hall. Just thought you deserved somethin’ nice after everything. You know -- a good fire, cold beer, clean sheets? A night of peace finally.”

Her breath catches in her throat and tears prick at her eyes again, just like they did when they were still outside, and she steps away before she can stop herself. She can’t handle this much affection right now; it threatens to overwhelm her, pull her good mood down into tears.

She pulls at the hem of his hoodie instead, pulling it up. “Take this off,” she says, voice rough, and he obeys without question.

By the time he’s dropping it on the floor, she’s out of her flannel and tank, standing before him in just a bra and jeans, but he stares back at her like she’s hung the moon. It makes her want to climb inside of him, to consume whatever’s making him look like that.

Instead, she shoves him backwards toward the bed, smiling when he drops on the mattress with a soft thump. She crawls over him, pushing him until he’s flat on his back with his hands on her bare waist and his mouth attached to her neck like he’s never going to let her go. 

She doesn’t want him to.

She moans and arches into his touch, leaning her head back and vaguely hoping he doesn’t leave a hickey even though she doesn’t particularly care, not when his big hands are sliding down her hips and under the waist of her jeans. He’s warm against her, stoking her own fire hotter, and she reaches behind her to undo the clasp of her bra with just a flick of her wrist. She pulls it free and drops it off the side of the bed, but the movement only serves to catch Sharky’s attention.

He releases her neck -- and, yeah, she’s definitely going to have a mark there, but who does she have to look professional for these days? -- and hauls her up his body so he can kiss farther down her chest and take her right nipple in his mouth. The movement pulls at the fresh tattoo on her chest, the wounds that are just scabbed over and definitely going to scar into something ugly, but it’s like Sharky can’t even see it. She ignores the pain and closes her eyes, focusing on the _good_ she can feel, the way he’s making her forget every fucking thing she’s been through since the helicopter crash.

He teases her with the same enthusiasm he uses for everything else, surprising a cry out of her that he eagerly returns against her skin. She threads her fingers into his hair and holds on tight enough to hurt him, holding his face against her chest like anything short of a gun to his head would make him pull away now.

He doesn’t pull away. If anything, he pushes closer, sitting up and switching from her left breast to her right, paying that nipple the same dedicated attention he had the first one. It’s overwhelming; she aches to have him inside of her, and when she settles her weight against the hardness she can feel still trapped in his jeans, he moans brokenly and moves to capture her lips with his.

This kiss is messy, rough. She bites at him and he bites at her in return, the sharp pricks of pain muddling her brain until she can’t think about anything else, but that’s just the way she wants it. 

She yanks the ratty old tanktop he’s still wearing up, stretching it almost to the point of tearing, releasing it only when he finally leans back and pulls it fully off. She pushes him back down onto his back when she has room to move, scooting back to sit on his thighs so she can pry his belt open and try to shimmy his jeans down before he latches his teeth back into her skin.

He’s still wearing his boots, so he has to pull away to undress himself. Again, she takes advantage of this and shucks off her jeans and boots too, self conscious, just for a second, that she hasn’t had time to take care of her body the way she always has. She starts to blush, to cover herself, suddenly back in her head and keenly aware of how her first boyfriend had insisted she stay shaved if they were going to have sex, but Sharky…

Sharky’s eyes are dark and his cheeks are pink and his cock is standing proud and hard between his thighs. He’s hairy too, across his chest and a thin trail down his stomach that thickens at the base of his cock. He’s staring at her, one hand wrapping around himself, the other reaching out until she moves back into his space on the bed.

“Do you know how fuckin’ hot you are?” His voice is low, rough, and she shivers as his calloused fingers skim her waist. “I can’t believe you’re really here.” His hand moves steadily higher, cupping her breast as he adds, almost like he’s accidentally voicing a thought, “Is this a Bliss dream, or what?”

She answers by capturing his lips with hers, biting again, one hand steadying herself on his waist as the other wraps around his cock. He groans into her, both hands moving to cup her jaw, a heady kind of desperation in his clutching fingers.

He stops kissing her and just rests his forehead against hers as she pumps him, steady movements and a firm grip making him shudder and twitch against her. 

“Please,” she rasps, “ _please_ tell me you have a condom.”

It takes him a minute to answer, but his words are like music to her ears. “There are, uh, actually some in the bathroom. Guess they didn’t make the emergency packing list.”

Relief flows through her even as she traces the tips of her fingers over the tip of his cock, a teasing touch over silky skin and beading precome. He groans deep in his throat, holding her almost too tight against the teasing pleasure of her skin against his, and it takes him several full seconds to realize she’s trying to get him to move when she says, “Go get one, then.”

When her words sink in, he practically throws her off him and onto the mattress so he can scramble past her out into the hall. She laughs, delighted at his enthusiasm, and stretches out on the sheets with her head on the pillow. It smells of unfamiliar detergent, but it’s the cleanest thing she’s slept on in days.

She stretches out on the clean sheets, joints popping as she forces them to their limits, and then she relaxes with her hands above her head and her lower lip captured between her teeth. She can hear Sharky bumping around the bathroom, each of his movements too loud and enthusiastic to be confined indoors, and she smiles.

Under any other circumstances, she would have laughed at the idea of her and Charlemagne Boshaw spending any time together at all, much less sneaking away from a town celebration to have sex. Everything else just adds to the uniqueness she’s facing -- where would she be if she hadn’t tried to arrest Joseph in the church? Where would she be if she had stayed dead any of the times she should have stayed dead?

Sharky comes back before she can get stuck in that line of thought, snapping her back to the present moment with a wolf whistle and the shuffle of foil-wrapped condoms shuffling around in a half-empty box. 

Her eyes open and she smiles at him, considering for half a second before she draws herself up on her knees to reach for him. He lets her direct him to sit against the headboard, lets her take the condoms from him, opens a package and rolls one on when she hands it to him while she leans in and bites at his neck.

She doesn’t wait one second longer than necessary before she moves over him, bracing her knees on either side of his hips and holding onto his shoulders to steady herself as she begins to lower herself down. He works with her, one hand on her waist, the other holding himself steady, and then… he’s inside of her, inching slowly deeper, stretching her and filling her and she really can’t remember what took her so long to kiss him.

“ _Holy_ shit, Mat.” Sharky draws out the _holy_ until he bottoms out, then the rest of his words come out of him in a rush. His fingertips dig into the flesh of her hips, holding her still. His eyes are squeezed shut, deepening the lines around them, and she brushes her fingertips over the lines until he relaxes.

He opens his eyes and meets her gaze, giving her a wide, dopey smile. Their lips meet again, gently, though she’s not sure which of them leaned forward first, then they rest their foreheads together with twin smiles.

“Good?” She clenches around him on purpose, just to make him moan when he starts to answer.

“Fuck. Yeah. Oh my God, yes.” His fingers tighten on her hips, urging her up just enough to catch her attention. “Shit. Can you, uh, can you just…”

He trails off as she starts to move, pushing herself up higher on her knees until he’s barely inside her still, then sliding back down at the same painfully slow pace as before. Sharky groans and tilts his head back against the headboard, flexing into her like he can’t help it but not doing anything to actually make her move faster. He just waits, desperate little wimpers leaving him with each slow movement of her hips.

She clutches the headboard with both hands, using it as leverage to help her move faster against him, her movements more sure. Each drag of his cock against her makes her ratchet higher, goosebumps breaking out on her skin even as sweat gathers on her scalp, behind her knees. 

Sharky opens his eyes and stares up at her, that beautiful blue dark and hungry. He slides his hands up her side as she rides him, fingers seeking out her breasts once more. He squeezes as her long thrusts turn to hard twists of her hips, grinding her clit against his pelvis and sending sparks of pleasure up her spine.

She closes her eyes first this time, overwhelmed as his rough fingers press against her nipples with more gentleness than she would have expected when they first met. It’s too much and not enough all at once, and her rhythm stutters as she begins to come.

“Fuck, Sharky, I’m…” She trails off, grabbing for his head to bring his face against hers so she can kiss him, whining the rest of her cry into his mouth. He surges forward, tongue against hers and hands back on her hips to keep her moving against him even as she shakes and forgets everything except the feeling of him against her, inside her.

He breaks their kiss and presses his face to her throat instead, growling against her skin, goatee scratching over where the bruise he left behind is still darkening. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, clutching him tight, holding him against her as he shudders through his own orgasm. 

He doesn’t let go of her and she doesn’t let go of him. They cling together as they catch their breath, then Sharky’s kissing up her neck and across her jaw to her lips.

She laughs against him, loose, happy. This is exactly what she needed, and she wants to tell him how much she appreciates him, how good he’s been to her, how much she needs him now.

What comes out of her mouth, still pressed against his, is, “I love you.”

Sharky laughs, a low rumble, and shakes his head. “What? Nah.”

She pulls back enough to grab his jaw, holding his face still to look in his eyes. His face is flushed, his hair mussed, his eyes bright, and this time it looks like he believes her when she repeats, “I love you. I’m _in_ love with you.”

It takes another second, but his smile widens until it’s blinding. “Aw, hell, Mat. I love you too.”

He kisses her again, softer, reverent, and then she has to physically push him away to give herself enough freedom to climb off of him and go clean up. She hears his heavy footsteps pass by the door, then back again a minute later, and he’s stretched out in the bed with the lights off when she makes it back to him.

She climbs in next to him, shivering a little in the autumn chill, and he pulls her body flush against his. This is better than the times they’ve fallen asleep together before, because this time they’re resting skin to skin and she can feel his heartbeat quickening as she traces her fingers up and down his side. He also has his face pressed against her hair, a smile on his lips, and she thinks she hears him repeat _I love you_ as she’s drifting off to sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

Mattie wakes up warm and sore in both the usual ways and in new ones. Her muscles ache from days of walking and fighting, and her thighs ache from her first good fuck since moving to Hope County. She smiles at the memory, tucking her face closer against Sharky’s chest. They’re still tangled together -- it doesn’t seem like they’ve moved all night, even though she knows he doesn’t sleep as hard as she does -- and he’s still holding her as closely as he was when she crawled in bed with him.

The second she starts to shift around, Sharky squeezes her. He’s been awake, holding her while she had a blessedly dreamless sleep, just waiting for her to come back to consciousness on her own. She doesn’t want to sound too poetic, but her heart skips a beat as he presses a kiss to the top of her head, then her forehead, then her nose as he tips her face up.

She smiles and laughs as he presses more kisses to her skin, heating under his attention until he makes it to his goal between her thighs. She throws her arm over her face to hide her eyes as he makes himself comfortable with her heels resting on his back and his arms hooked around her legs to hold her hips steady as he begins to taste her.

They haven’t even said good morning yet, and he’s already got his tongue buried so far in her cunt she’s forgotten how to breathe.

He licks her until she’s not sure she can take any more, until her throat is raw from crying out her pleasure and her thighs are trembling where they’re clamped around his head. When she curls in on herself to get away from the sensation, he follows her, moving with her until she comes again and again, until she has to push him away with both hands on his head and one foot on his shoulder.

He climbs up the bed beside her, laughing as he presses a wet kiss to her lips, then collapses against her side, right hand working hard between his own legs. She tries to reach for him with shaking hands, but he grabs her wandering fingers with his free hand and brings it to his mouth, kissing her knuckles before holding it captive to his chest. 

“Sharky?” She says his name, uncertain, voice still hoarse, and he squeezes her fingers as he comes onto his stomach, coating his fingers and groaning through it. She watches with lips parted, breath still coming in hard gasps as she calms down.

She has never, ever been with a guy who enjoyed eating her out that much.

“Holy shit,” he says, finally, voice deep with arousal and still a little sleep. 

“Yeah,” she laughs. “Holy shit.”

He turns his head to look at her, a wide, loopy smile on his face, and she can’t resist leaning in to kiss him again. 

“Good morning.” He speaks against her lips, lips curving into a smile as she kisses him again before pushing herself up to rest on her arms. 

“It _is_ a good morning,” she says, and then she laughs again, stretching out her legs and flexing her toes to force some feeling into them. Sharky chuckles back at her, and she looks down at him with a soft smile. “Honestly, I kind of thought your stories were, uh, mostly bragging? But that was… _fuck._ ”

His smile transforms into a smirk. “C’mon, let me show you more,” he offers, starting to reach for her again, but she launches herself off the bed to get out of reach of his grasping hands. She stumbles a little, legs still shaking, and she leans most of her weight against the chest of drawers by the door. It rattles dangerously, empty since its owners left, and she starts to laugh as Sharky does.

“Babe,” she says, the nickname dripping from her lips like it’s always belonged there, and her heart does a little skip when Sharky’s eyes practically turn into hearts. “We don’t have time. We gotta -- well, I gotta talk to Joey, see what the plan is. You can come with, or not, but I have to shower first.”

Sharky pretends to consider for a minute, flexing his sticky hand, then shrugs. “Lead the way, Po-po.”

\---

In the end, it’s nearly noon by the time Mattie’s clean and dressed and ready to get back to fucking up the Seeds’ day. She’d love to just let Sharky lure her back into their borrowed bed, wear her out again and again until she can just sleep without dreaming again, really relax for the first time since Burke showed up in Hope County with a warrant in his hand and a smirk on his stupid face. She’d love to forget, just for another day (or two), everything going on around her, the fires raging that only she can put out.

But Jacob still has Staci, and Faith still has Burke, and someone has to do something about it.

Joey’s sitting out in front of the Spread Eagle, a mug of steaming coffee in her hands and her rifle across her lap. She looks clean, hair still a little damp, the healing scabs and bruises on her visible skin more obvious in the bright sunlight. She squints at Mattie as Mattie draws closer, her tense expression melting into a smile.

“Rookie.”

Mattie huffs a laugh and settles in the other chair, carefully not reaching out to touch Joey like she wants, like she used to offer a hug or a light punch in greeting. Joey’s defensiveness from John’s bunker is still a harsh, fresh memory, and Mattie’s determined to be respectful no matter how wrong it feels. It’s still the right thing to do.

“Hey, Jo.” Mattie props one foot up on the bar’s railing and fishes her cigarettes out of her bag. She offers one to Joey before shrugging and lighting it herself.

Silence and smoke drifts between them, almost as comfortably as it did before all this. 

Almost, but not quite. Mattie’s guilt is stifling her, even if it doesn’t quite meet Joey. Despite everything, despite having Joey safe next to her, Mattie’s nearly overwhelmed by the knowledge she should have done _more._ She should have been _faster_.

The forty marks on her arm, now hidden by her jacket, don’t do enough to reassure her that she’s literally giving everything she has to this god-forsaken county.

“Mary May says Jacob and Faith are still alive.”

Mattie tilts her head just enough toward Joey to look at her out of the corner of her eye. “Yeah.”

“You came for me first?” Her broken fingernails tap against her mug. _Tap tap tap._

“Yeah. I’ve been all over, but… I couldn’t leave you with John.” Joey hums a little, just an acknowledgement, and Mattie continues, “I haven’t seen Burke yet. Whitehorse is okay, over at the jail with Minkler. Jacob has Staci, and he…”

Joey sighs, a short, sharp, reproachful sound. Mattie winces. “John, that mother _fucker,_ told me all about it. You gotta get Staci out of there, Rook.”

Mattie nods. “Yeah. I know.”

Joey turns to look at her, fingers still. Mattie looks up to meet her gaze, ashamed eyes meeting Joey’s defiant ones.

“No. Now. You go now, and you kill Jacob, and you bring Staci back here. You hear me?”

Mattie’s nodding before Joey’s done speaking. “Okay. I will. Promise. You, you staying here?”

Joey nods. “I trust you. You got me, you can get him. I’ll just slow you down.”

“Okay. I will.” She breaks Joey’s gaze and stubs out her cigarette in the ashtray on the rail. “I’ll be back, Jo.” She hesitates, then adds, “I love you.”

Joey’s hand snaps out as Mattie stands, grabbing her wrist. Joey’s skin is too hot against hers, warmed by her coffee. “Hey. I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Go kick that fucker’s ass, okay?”

Mattie would walk right into Joseph’s compound today if Joey told her to. She smiles, hopes Joey won’t notice her eyes getting a little watery. “Okay.”

“And I love you too.”

Mattie smiles wider and pulls her pack up and on her back. She turns to go, gets a few feet away before Joey calls out with a laugh in her voice, “And tell whoever you spent the night with to be more careful about those hickeys! You’re not in high school!”

She doesn’t turn around, just lifts her right hand up with her middle finger pointing high. Joey’s laugh is loud, then gets louder when Sharky appears with his own bag, grabbing Mattie around the waist to give her a sound kiss like it’s totally normal, like it’s something they’ve been doing every day. 

Mattie nearly knocks his hat off trying to catch her balance as she laughs too.

“Ready to head up to the mountains? I’ll see if Jess can meet us at the border.”

Sharky looks over Mattie’s shoulder towards the still-laughing Joey, then back down at Mattie with a smile. “Sure thing, boss. Let’s give ol’ Jake-n-Bake the business. Ride or die, remember?”

Mattie takes his hand in hers. “Ride or die.”

\---

Jess meets them at the edge of the state park, her quiver bristling with arrows. She emerges from the trees with an eerie silence that makes Mattie shiver even as it makes her a little jealous -- she still can’t quite walk through the woods without snapping twigs and crunching leaves under her feet -- and her gaze immediately drops to the bruise on Mattie’s neck that she hadn’t bothered to hide even after Joey made fun of her for it.

Jess glances from the hickey to Sharky and then back to meet Mattie’s gaze, the _really?_ clear on her face.

Mattie shrugs. Jess sighs.

Sharky’s either oblivious to the moment of tension or just doesn’t care, because he sidles up between the two women with a grin and his shotgun resting up on his shoulder. “Well ain’t you a sight, Jess?” he greets, grin just growing wider as she turns her silent glare up to him. “Saddle up and join the team!”

After a moment, her face cracks, and she grins right back at Sharky, her scars pulling the expression up oddly. It’s cute, and the knot of tension in Mattie’s chest dissipates as quickly as it came.

“Do you know where we can start?”

Jess nods. “Elk Jaw Lodge isn’t far from here. Peggies took it a while ago, and taking it back’ll hurt ‘em.”

Mattie smiles. “Perfect. Lead the way.”

Jess does, though Mattie makes them stop to liberate a peggie vehicle on the way. If she drives carefully enough and Sharky stays in the back where he can stretch out his long legs next to Boomer, no one looks at them funny, even when they drive right past peggie checkpoints on the side of the road.

It’s the best camouflage she can think of, short of stripping some peggies naked and putting on their clothes which just _look_ like they reek of BO. If she did that, though, she’d probably be able to drive right up to Jacob’s front door and blow his head clean off without trouble.

“You should pull over here,” Jess says, leaning forward in her seat and putting both feet on the floor of the van.

Mattie obeys, parking on the side of the road and killing the engine. She leaves the keys in the ignition as they all climb out together, not concerned with whether or not someone else will take the van while they’re busy with the lodge. It’s not like it belongs to her anyway.

“Okay, we’re going to go in quiet,” Mattie says, looking right at Sharky. He blinks at her like he has no idea what she’s trying to say. “I’ll pick off as many as I can with my sniper rifle, and Jess, you can do the same with your bow?” She glances at Jess to see her nod, then she looks back at Sharky. “And once they notice what’s going on, _then_ you can set them on fire, deal?”

Sharky huffs, but then he smiles. “You’re the boss!”

They stare at each other for a minute, then she nods, accepting his agreement. Jess is smirking again when she looks back, and Mattie just shrugs.

There’s no point in hiding what she and Sharky have become. Jess can laugh all she wants. It is… probably a little ridiculous, but Mattie doesn’t care. She’s going to take her little moment of happiness and hold on as tight as she can until this whole cult situation is taken care of.

They split up and head for opposite sides of the lodge. Mattie stays up on the hill side, laying on one of the stone outcroppings with her eye against the scope of her rifle, breathing slowly as she watches the peggies milling around the building. Jacob’s voice comes steadily over the speakers, but she’s not sure if the nonsense he’s spouting this time is a recording or some sort of weird-ass live sermon. It doesn’t seem like he’d be talking about his followers being judged by their animals the day after his little brother’s death, but who knows? She doesn’t understand the Seeds, not really. That’s why they have a leg up on her.

Sharky’s stretched out at her side, chin in his hands, humming a nonsense tune under his breath. He’s keeping a watch on the area around her, tasked momentarily with watching her back while she watches Jacob’s Chosen.

She pulls the trigger, and one falls behind a pile of bliss crates. No one else seems to notice, but Sharky jumps a little at the sudden noise. She smiles at him despite the curl of nausea in her gut. She hates this.

She _hates_ it.

A moment later and another peggie falls under her watchful eye, then another. She happens to spot another peggie falling with an arrow in the back of his skull; Jess is holding up her end of the bargain even though Mattie can’t see her. She’s a good fuckin’ shot, that’s for sure.

Mattie sees the instant one of the peggies realizes what’s going on around him, watches the look of horror pass over his face as he sees one of the men she’d killed bleeding out on the sidewalk. He falls to his knees to check the fallen peggie’s pulse, and that’s the moment of hesitation Mattie needs. She takes him out too, then hears a cry from farther away.

“Sharky, go,” she says, and he scrambles to his feet with a wild cry that absolutely gives away their position. She doesn’t mind so much, watching through the scope as the peggies begin to scramble, one of them heading straight for the radio and falling when she shoots him in the back. Sharky takes their attention with him as he skids down the hill, flamethrower already spurting flame before he gets close, and she covers his back as he goes.

They’re a good team, all three of them. She doesn’t even really care when he accidentally sets off a stack of bliss barrels, making them explode and fill the air with the sickening sweet scent of the flowers, because Jess materializes next to him to punch him in the shoulder. 

They must have cleared the whole lodge. Perfect. She didn’t even die this time.

The lodge is full of dead wolves, the scent sharp enough that Sharky gags once it hits him. He doesn’t wait around to smell it again before he goes back outside to find Boomer, grumbling that the dog’s stink is better than this. Jess and Mattie continue on, noses wrinkled but lunches staying where they belong, searching through the building for anything useful. 

Mattie pockets $27 and some bandaids before her radio squawks to life. It feels like she hasn’t been in the Whitetails in weeks, so it takes her several seconds to recognize Eli’s staticky voice.

 _“Welcome back, Deputy!”_ he says, and she pulls her radio off her hip to hear him better. “ _I’ve got some people coming down to meet you._ ” A pause, then: “ _We haven’t seen you for a while. Over._ ”

She winces, taking a moment to just close her eyes and press her knuckles to her forehead. She knows when she’s being scolded, even as mild as Eli seems to be.

“Sorry about that,” she says, holding the talk button down with her thumb. She feels shaky and sick, suddenly, so she abandons her search of the lodge and heads outside. Eli’s men can finish up in here. “Been pretty busy in the Valley, but you got all my attention now, over.”

 _“Oh, we heard all about that,”_ he says, and she’s pretty sure he’s smiling. Her tension eases a bit as she steps into the sunlight, squinting against the brightness to find Sharky in the chaos of the peggies’ supplies. _“We’re real proud of you. My guys’ll be there soon and they got a favor to ask, over.”_

She finds Sharky on the side of the lodge facing the lake, just throwing rocks into it to watch the ripples. She smiles and leans against the wall to watch. “We’re happy to help. Whatever your boys need. Over.”

_“We appreciate it. Over’n out.”_

The radio falls silent, but she keeps the top of it pressed against her chin as she waits. The second tick by, but Jacob’s voice doesn’t come through once Eli’s has disappeared. Either he doesn’t know what she’s done yet, or he’s not concerned enough to drag her in for another round of training.

Boomer trots up to her and flops down at her feet, rolling over onto his back in the dirt. She pokes at him with the toe of her boot, and he wiggles from side to side, tongue lolling out of his mouth. If he’s not worried about Jacob’s men, she’s not going to bring it up and put that energy out there.

Sharky glances over his shoulder at her when she doesn’t say anything else. He looks her up and down, fast like he’s checking to see if she’s okay, then again a little slower so that his eyes linger on her chest. He winks at her when he’s done staring, and she huffs a tired laugh.

“You die yet today?”

What an absurd fucking question to ask under any other circumstances.

She shakes her head. “Not yet. Some of the Whitetails are comin’ down to take the lodge back over, then we have to do something for Eli.”

He nods, almost to himself, and wipes his hands off on his jeans. She’s still leaning against the lodge when he wraps her in a full-bodied hug, his arms around her and his chin on the top of her head. She ducks her chin against her chest so she’ll fit better, curling into his embrace like she never wants to leave… and she doesn’t, even when Jess opens the closest door and boos at them.

Mattie stifles a giggle against Sharky’s chest as he blows a raspberry at Jess.

It feels… good, _normal,_ and the guilt at feeling that way when a war still rages on makes her pull away and walk around the lodge to the parking lot to wait for the Whitetails. Jess and Sharky follow her, bickering quietly, and Mattie wonders how well they actually know each other and what kind of answer she’s going to get if she asks. 

They sit out front and smoke her cigarettes while they wait. Mattie props her feet up in Sharky’s lap and leans against Jess without thinking about it, but Jess lets herself be used as a backrest without complaint.

They don’t bother moving again until Eli’s men show up.

She doesn't recognize them, just the Whitetail Militia insignia they're all wearing, but when they ask for her help to rescue some of the other militia members from Jacob’s clutches, she listens. She can't say no, can't ignore the desperation in their eyes.

The men she leaves with him will be killed or tortured like she was. The men who get caught going in after them will be killed or tortured like she was. 

She already escaped once. She took the lodge back.

She can do this. She has Sharky and Jess and Boomer, and they can do this.

They climb back in the peggie van and head north, following Jess’ directions and the signs up to the Whitetail visitor center. The roads are windy, sharply uphill, and Sharky complains about getting carsick until Jess finally switches with him to shut him up. He rolls his window down for the fresh air and reaches over to hold Mattie’s hand for the rest of the drive.

The Whitetail Visitor Center is exactly as Mattie has always pictured it, just also now crawling with peggies. It's beautiful and rustic, up on a hill, with one of Jacob’s chosen standing every hundred feet or so, watching for anyone who might dare to fight back against them. She hauls herself up a tree (with Sharky’s help) and uses her binoculars to check for hostages.

There are two men and a woman, all on their knees with their hands behind their backs. Why haven't they been moved yet? What's taking Jacob so long?

Mattie doesn't like this. She _hates_ it. 

They take the Visitor Center the same way they take the lodge, and Mattie gets the pleasure of slicing through the makeshift handcuffs tying the Whitetails’ hands behind their backs. They thank her, praise her for killing the peggies so ruthlessly, beg her to go to Devil’s Drop to rescue the other men they were captured with.

It's never ending, and Mattie can't say no.

Devil’s Drop is, as the name makes it sound, so much higher up the mountain that Mattie resolutely keeps both hands on the wheel and refuses to look down. It’s dizzying, being up this high, and she absolutely hates it. She turns the radio down and grits her teeth, trying to stare directly at the road and not up at the mountains above or down at the steep drop off below. 

Even Sharky takes the hint and stays quiet until they park their borrowed van on the side of the road. Eli breaks the silence first, coming in over the radio to tell them how to get into the Hawkeye Tunnel without dying right away, not that Mattie’s particularly worried about that. She would feel bad if the hostages are killed because she fucked up, so she listens, and she does what Eli says even though it requires climbing _up_ the mountain on her _own two feet_ and as soon as she gets the chance to kill Jacob she’s never ever coming back here.

This is the fucking worst.

The side entrance to the tunnel is what must be known as the Devil’s Drop, what should be a beautiful overlook turned into a place of torment for the Whitetails. There’s blood on the stones, both caked in and old and fresh from the bleeding woman on the end of a peggie’s baseball bat. He swings the bat as Mattie watches from higher up, cracking the woman’s head so that she falls without a sound.

Mattie sees red as he beats her again and again, shattering her skull for no reason other than a love of violence. She seethes and then she launches into action, leaping from her perch directly onto the peggie’s back to snap his neck.

It’s faster than the death he deserves, but it’s all she has time for when the men he was with start to yell out a warning to more men inside she can’t see.

Oops.

Jess stays hidden, picking off peggies with her arrows as they come into view. More than once Mattie takes aim only to find the man she was pointing at falling with an arrow in his throat.

Sharky jumps in like she did, and maybe he’s a bad influence on her fighting style, but he whoops to draw attention to himself and blasts through the wave of reinforcements with his shotgun, disappearing into the tunnel to get into more trouble.

Mattie stays where she is, defending the surviving hostage until the fighting stops and she’s able to slice through the zip tie holding his hands together. He thanks her and moves to check the woman lying dead at his side, his fingers searching fruitlessly for a pulse under the blood coating her face and neck. Mattie watches as it drips onto the stone floor, nauseated but unable to look away, until the man stands and leaves alone.

After a moment, Eli’s voice crackles over her radio, making her flinch away from the noise. _“We lost some good people today, but you did the best you could,”_ he says, and she grimaces, not sure that’s true. The best she could would have been to save everyone. _“Helping us take care of our own is gonna have a big impact on moral. Maybe you can get some more folks to join up too.”_ He pauses, and she rubs her forehead with bruised knuckles as she waits. _“Shit, I knew Tammy was wrong about you. Congratulations, you’re one of us now. If you’ve got more time, I’ve got more work. Come see us in the Wolf’s Den when you’re ready. Over.”_

She waits several long seconds before she says anything back, ignoring the temptation to just… not respond. She already knows she can’t just leave. “Thanks, Eli. I’ll see you soon. Over and out.”

The radio falls silent and she heaves a sigh of relief. She starts searching through the fallen peggie bodies for ammunition and cash, wondering when she stopped feeling bad about stealing from the dead.

“Better be careful, you might get zombie on you,” Sharky says, and she glances up with a retort on the tip of her tongue that she has to bite back when she realizes he has someone with him.

She stands straight, squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin so she can meet the newcomer’s eyes. He’s tall, taller than Sharky, and familiar in a way that makes her wrack her brain to remember why she’s met him before. He has on Whitetail gear, but she doesn’t think he was in the Wolf’s Den last time she was there, and it isn’t until he reaches out to shake her hand with his (very large) one that she remembers.

“Jude Wright,” she says, and she watches his face bloom into a smile the same time Sharky’s twists into a little frown. “You warned us about this.”

“I tried,” he says, a wry chuckle slipping from him that she doesn’t think comes from a place of real humor. “Shit’s crazier now than when I started putting two and two together.”

Sharky comes around to stand by her side and throws one arm around her shoulders. She leans against him but doesn’t take her eyes off Jude.

“Yeah,” she says, and then because she doesn’t know what else to say, she adds, “I’m sorry.”

He shrugs, pulls the rubber band out of his hair to shake it out and twist it back up. “Listen, is Staci…” His question trails off, his eyes begging her to understand the rest of the question so he doesn’t have to spell it out, and her heart breaks just a little bit more.

He came to the station and asked for Staci specifically, and Mattie and Joey teased Staci about it relentlessly even though they knew it was just because Jude overheard Staci talking shit about the peggies and knew he was safe to go to with concerns. Apparently they were more right about the situation than they realized.

“Still with Jacob,” Mattie says, voice breaking when Jude’s face falls. “I’m getting him back. I promise.” 

He nods, tucks his hands into his pockets and stares at his shoes for a moment. When he looks back up at her, his eyes are red around the rim, and she leans harder into Sharky’s side.

“You have our support. Whatever you need to bring down Jacob.”

They stare at each other for a long silence, sizing each other up. Whatever he sees in her must make him trust her, because he nods again like his word is final, and he turns to leave. She won’t rest until she puts a knife through Jacob’s heart herself and bring Staci home, and he knows.

He understands.

\---

Jacob’s men come for her in the middle of the night, while she’s curled up in an abandoned cabin with Sharky wrapped around her and Jess snoring on the couch in the other room. She barely wakes up in time to see the peggies tying her legs together before the bliss overtakes her.

She doesn’t hear snoring before she falls unconscious.

Only silence.

\---

The next time she knows what’s happening to her, she’s lying on packed dirt as a man she doesn’t know tries to get her to drink water out of a bowl. Everything aches and she feels sick; even the water makes her stomach turn and she pushes the stranger away with a barely repressed gag.

“You must be strong,” someone says, not the man in front of her, because he flinches away. “One of you _will be_ strong,” someone says again, and this time she’s able to push through the haze of bliss and pain to recognize Staci.

He’s at the bars of their cage, staring right at her.

 _She_ will be strong.

She nods at him, fast, and he has time to smile at her before Jacob shoos him away. He scurries away, bowing his head and clasping his hands together at his front, looking nothing like the Staci Pratt who had teased her relentlessly when she joined the Sheriff’s department, practically pulling her pigtails until she realized she could pull his right back.

She’s going to kill Jacob Seed with her bare hands if it’s the last thing she ever does.

The man in question is currently embracing, of all people, Joseph, and Mattie’s grinds her teeth together so hard she’s practically foaming at the mouth to get to him. She grabs the bars of her cage and uses them to haul herself up to a kneeling position, furious and weak and shaking, and Joseph turns to her with the same fucking calm expression he always has.

She wants to spit in his face, considers it, but then he starts talking and she’s distracted enough to forget the impulse.

“I know you’re in pain,” he says, kneeling and holding onto the cage bars too. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh.”

The verse is like a slap to the face, the same words her own father used to say to her when he would punish her for some perceived slight. She rears back a little, but Joseph doesn’t hesitate, just keeps fucking going. 

“You’re not the only one to be tested. Did you know I had a wife?”

She’s so surprised by the admission that she actually shakes her head at him, answering his question even though he doesn’t stop to wait for a reply before he’s showing her a tattoo on his wrist. She’s beautiful, as far as Mattie can see in the dim light, and the feeling of dread grows as Joseph finishes his story.

“We were pregnant with our first child. We were just babies ourselves, and I was terrified. Of becoming a father, mostly about money. She wasn’t worried. She had _faith_ everything would work out. She always had… faith. Then, one day, she was gonna go visit a friend… there was an accident. The Lord taketh. They rushed me to the hospital and put me in a room with this little pink bundle stuffed with tubes, and they said that I had to be _strong,_ that my little girl was going to live. God was looking out for our daughter.”

No one has ever mentioned another Seed. No one has ever mentioned Joseph having a daughter. Watching the blankness in his eyes makes her stomach roll again, and dread grows heavy inside of her. She grips the bars tighter, leans closer, waits for him to say the words she knows he’s going to say.

“They left me alone in the room with her, and I just… stared at my daughter.” He cuts his eyes back to her when he says _daughter_ and she tightens her grip on the bars to avoid flinching away. Somehow, she’s sure he knows. “So helpless, so innocent. And all she had in the world was me.” His lip trembles and sympathy fights with the Wrath still in Mattie’s heart. “A _nobody_ from _nowhere_ with _nothing._ In that moment… I knew that God was testing me. He was laying out a path before me, and all I had to do was choose. So I put my hand on my little girl’s head, and I leaned in, and I could smell… And we prayed together. Prayed for wisdom, prayed for strength, and I knew… I _heard_ God’s plan for me. I took my fingers and I put them on that little plastic tube that was taped to her angelic face and I pinched it shut.”

Fuck. Oh, fuck. She’s holding onto the bars so tight her joints ache, her knuckles white. If she could tear his throat out with her bare teeth right now, she would, and damn the consequences. She’ll do it a thousand times and let herself be dragged back to this exact spot a thousand more times before she’d be able to soothe the hate lodged tight in her soul.

Joseph stares back at her like he _knows_ what she’s thinking, like he’s fully privy to the mental pictures swirling faster and faster through her head.

Maybe he is.

“After a while her legs began to kick and kick, and then… nothing. Stillness. Release. The Lord giveth and the Lord… _taketh._ ” He stands and pulls her with him, and she leans so close to the bars she can smell him. “The pain, the sacrifice, this is all part of His test. We have to prove that we can serve God, no matter what He asks.”

He touches her cheek with his rosary-wrapped hand, and she bares her teeth to him. He smiles like he knows, like he _knows_ what she’s going through. The pain and the sacrifice of giving her life over and over and over until she has nothing left? The pain of seeing her loved ones die over and over and over until she doesn’t even flinch at a grenade that lands between them? The pain of watching the Seeds ruin the first county that’s ever felt like home to her?

She turns with the intention of biting his fingers, but he pulls away before she can, leaving her to gnash her teeth at the empty air around her. She doesn’t look at Staci, doesn’t look away from Joseph and Jacob as she shoves herself as close to the cage bars as she can, pushing one arm through like she’ll be able to haul Joseph back to her so she can gouge his eyes out.

Jacob sees her reaching and just smirks as he winds the music box.

She falls unconscious with a scream.

\---

She wakes up sore and bruised and exhausted at the bottom of Devil’s Drop, shattered bodies around her. She doesn’t know if she died on impact like the rest of them only to be pieced back together by whatever has been keeping her alive, but she doesn’t really care.

She doesn’t fucking care anymore.

She radios Sharky, finds out he woke up back in his home in the Henbane, and tells him to meet her back at the Clagett Boathouse. She says if he finds Jess or Boomer to bring them too, and he grumbles about wanting to pick up Hurk, and then he agrees to meet her as soon as he can.

The radio falls silent for several seconds before she brings her shaking hand up to her face.

“I love you, Sharky. Over.”

The line crackles. _“I love you, shorty. See ya soon. Over’n’out.”_


	8. Chapter 8

Boomer finds her before anyone else does. He flops right down by her side and heaves a great sigh, like he knows what she’s gone through and he’s tired of it too, and she lets her bare feet soak in the water of Clagett Bay while she pets his belly.

It’s peaceful, sitting in the quiet and listening to the birds singing and the occasional splash of a fish rising too close to the surface to get a bug, and if she was any other person sitting here under any other circumstances, she’d be able to relax.

But she’s not — she’s Mattie Covington, ex-EMT, junior deputy, would-be savior of Hope County, and she’s fucking _furious._

She’s smoked through most of her cigarettes by the time Sharky shows up with Hurk at his side, feeling jittery and nauseated and fit to fucking burst. Sharky’s hopping out of the Jeep before it’s really parked, jogging over to her on his long legs while she stubs out her cigarette on the dock and hauls herself to her feet.

He wraps her up in a hug that first knocks her back a step and then lifts her off her feet, a hug so tight she can’t breathe but doesn’t care because she hadn’t realized how much she missed the lingering scent of sweat and kerosene until she has her face buried in the collar of his hoodie. She gasps out a sob, clenches her teeth to hold it back, unwilling to start crying now when they have so much more to do.

When Sharky finally puts her down, he only puts enough space between them to cup her jaw in his big hands. His eyes — blue like the Seeds’ but so much kinder, full of so much more warmth and love — scour her face like he can figure out everything she’s been through just by taking stock of the bruises, and then he kisses her right in the center of her forehead and she has to fight back the tears all over again.

“You good, chica?”

She shrugs a little. “I’m all in one piece.” It’s about all she can say at this point. She’s alive and uninjured beyond bruises and sore muscles, but she’s hungry and tired and so pissed she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She’s practically vibrating with it.

“C’mon now, don’t hog the deputy!” Hurk appears in Mattie’s line of vision, bouncing off to Sharky’s side. “It’s my turn for a hug!”

Sharky glances over his shoulder at him then gives Mattie a searching look before he lets her go. He steps aside and lets her walk past him, arms up to hug Hurk around the neck. He hugs her back with as much enthusiasm as he does everything else, squeezing hard enough to crack her back as he lifts her off her feet too. He shakes her a little, makes her laugh, then puts her down. 

“You damn near gave me’n Sharky a heart attack!” He says, loud, like any of this is under her control. “You can’t be letting Jacob’s guys get to you like that. A person’s brain can only handle being washed so many times before it gets all soggy!”

That’s not what she was expecting him to say, not even a little, and all the annoyance in her whooshes out in a burst of laughter that surprises all three of them. Boomer yips and jumps up to put his front paws on her chest, knocking her back until Sharky catches her with his hands on her shoulders and starts to laugh too.

She wipes her eyes as she catches her breath. “You’ll just have to help me bring him down, then. Think we can handle it?”

Hurk beams at her and rests his hands on his hips. “Oh, absolutely. I’m ready to go. What’s the plan, boss?”

She doesn't know. But she knows who does.

\---

Eli’s suggestion for breaking down Jacob’s hold on the mountain is not that dissimilar to what Dutch told her to do in the valley: burn it to the ground. He gives her all the information they have about the cult’s activities in the Whitetails, the outposts and the supply lines and the wolf beacons, marking each one for her on a park map liberated from the Visitor’s Center.

Wheaty asks her to find him more music stashed throughout the mountains, in people’s cabins and in their bunkers, and she agrees with a laugh. He’s a cute kid and he doesn’t deserve to see all this shit happening around him. If he wants records to play over a Whitetail Militia radio station, then he’s going to _get_ records to play over a Whitetail Militia radio station even if it kills her in the process (and, she knows, it probably will).

Jude asks about Staci again, eyes red-rimmed, and they cry together when Mattie says he’s still locked up. Jude doesn’t need to know the exact details. Staci’s doing what he can, and what he wants to tell Jude when Mattie finally gets him out of there is his business.

And she’s definitely going to get him out of there, no matter how many times she dies on the way.

Sharky is forbidden from using his flamethrower in the mountains with the woods so dry, and he pouts about it for as long as it takes him to come up with a plan to do as much damage as he can otherwise. He cheers up when Mattie promises he can use explosives on the wolf beacons, backing up her promise at the first one they find just south of the den.

The sound and sight of the explosion, and the peggie fight they get into afterwards, is worth it to see Sharky’s delighted cheer and little dance. These are the things she has to focus on if she doesn’t want to completely fucking lose it.

She can’t rescue Staci if she completely fucking loses it.

They find records here and there, and Mattie dutifully piles them up in the back of the Jeep. There are dozens, albums and artists she’s never heard of but that Hurk and Sharky occasionally recognize. Her music knowledge contains a huge blind spot from growing up in such a conservative place — basically everything before she became an EMT is a big empty space.

She doesn’t mention this to the boys.

She just lets them have their fun.

They don’t hear anything from Jacob again until after they take back the PIN-K0 radar station, blowing up several of his helicopters and leaving them to burn on the surrounding mountainside. Eli cheers her on over the radio, praising her, saying people are joining the Whitetails in greater numbers now that she’s out here giving them hope ( _“Actions speak louder than words!”_ he says, and she listens silently as she washes peggie blood off her face in the PIN-K0 bathroom), and as soon as he’s done encouraging her, Jacob takes his turn.

His voice is low over the radio, gravely, and she grimaces while she stands there listening. She crosses her arms and leans against the skin with her hip, turning the volume down so there’s less chance of Sharky or Hurk overhearing whatever the fuck is about to come out of Jacob Seed’s mouth.

 _“The human brain is a fascinating thing,”_ he says, tone so fuckin’ casual like they’re having this conversation over lunch. _“Once you start poking around in there, it’s surprising what you get it to do under the right circumstances. You’re familiar with the term ‘classical conditioning,’ right, Deputy?”_ He doesn’t wait for a response, and why would he? He doesn’t care. This is about intimidation, not about having a real conversation with her. _“It’s when a conditioned stimulus, say a song, leads to a reflective response. In this case… to train, to kill, to sacrifice.”_

Well… okay. That’s fucking forboding. She tries not to think about what he’s training her for, but there are honestly only so many things. If he doesn’t want her at his side like he’s got Staci, then…

 _“You managed to escape for a little bit, but whenever I want, I can have you back here with me. But you’ve got time to play your little games; I’ll let you know when it’s time to come home._ Only you…”

She wants to gag when he sings the first two words of that goddamn song, but she fights the impulse, swallowing hard as her mouth begins to water a bit. 

Eli said she’d been de-conditioned, but just hearing him say those words… Maybe she can get Wheaty to de-condition her again when she takes him all the records. He’ll probably do anything for her once he gets his hands on all these new albums.

Jacob doesn’t say anything else, and she doesn’t say anything back.

He doesn’t really want to hear what she has to say. He’s only interested in conditioning her for whatever he’s got planned and making her talk to Joseph to hear his fucking shitty life story.

She takes the radio with her and goes back to find Sharky and Hurk, who are already drinking while they wait for Eli’s boys to come take over the station. She joins them, drinking more slowly, and watches as they pass out in a snoring pile. 

She kisses Sharky’s forehead and brushes his messy hair away from his face, heart twisting when he smiles and murmurs her name in his sleep.

She’s just sitting on the side of the road when Jacob’s men come for her again. There’s no reason to put the boys in jeopardy this time.

\---

She’s thoroughly unsurprised when she wakes up in Jacob’s cages, her brain fogged from who knows how many doses of bliss and her stomach sticking to her spine from hunger. Jacob’s methods have always been achingly simple: bliss, starvation, and dehydration, then the godawful simulation where she has to kill other captives and militia members alike (which unfortunately means more bliss).

She cannot _wait_ to kill him.

She manages to turn her head to the side despite the aching, and the guy who was in her here with her last time is still here. He’s dead, and a wolf is gnawing on his leg, trying to pull him close enough to the bars to make a real meal out of him. She’s not scared or surprised, just jealous that the wolf gets to eat and she doesn’t.

She stares back up at the sky through the top of the cage and sighs.

If she’s awake now, she just has to wait until Jacob decides to show up.

He’s goddamn lucky she’s too hungry to fucking move. She wants to gouge his eyes out with her bare hands, maybe feed them to the wolves he keeps, maybe give them to Joseph as a present.

Is that too on the nose for Joseph, given his history of gouging people’s eyes out? Will he appreciate the stylistic choice?

She’s still thinking about this, staring up at the ice-blue sky, when she hears Staci’s quiet voice from near her feet. She pushes herself up onto her elbows, sweat breaking out on her forehead at the effort, and watches as he reaches between the bars with one hand to put a metal bowl full of… dog food? Undercooked ground beef? Something she’d normally never think of eating on the floor in front of her.

He gives her a wild look when she doesn’t move right away, pushing it forward once toward her.

She tries to remember what she’s seen on _Naked and Afraid_ — a human body can go twenty-one days without food, but she doesn’t think it’s been quite that long. If she catches something from the food, that’ll dehydrate her, and she’s not keen on trying to fight off food poisoning or a parasite in the middle of Jacob’s camp.

He’s as likely to just dump her ass out in the woods as anything else if she gets sick, probably tell her that if she was _strong enough_ she wouldn’t have gotten sick, like this is another one of his fucking Darwinian tests.

Staci’s not having it. “Eat!” he hisses, voice so low that no one in the other cages will be able to hear. He looks like shit, worse than she thinks she probably looks, and the rage she felt at Jacob a moment ago comes back full force. She uses it to push herself up and forward, aiming at grabbing Staci before he moves away from the bars, but he scurries back and stands up out of her reach.

“Staci, come—” she cuts herself off, snapping her teeth together when he shakes his head at her and assumes the same position he was in the last time she saw him, hands clasped together, shoulders back, head bowed. Jacob’s behind him, smirking, strutting up like he has all the time in the world like a goddamn fucking asshole.

This close, she can smell the meat, and her mouth waters again. She gives in and grabs a handful, intent on eating what she can before Jacob moves the rest of the way in and announces whatever he has planned for her.

She needs the strength, food poisoning be damned. Staying alive is more important.

She doesn’t know how much time she’ll get back if she does die, if the _black white black_ will dump her back moments before death like usual or back to this point to eat the stupid food, or if starving to death instead of getting shot or strangled or stabbed or exploded will mean she’ll actually have to stay dead.

She doesn’t know the rules, but she’s _not_ permanently dying because she thought she was too good to eat the food presented to her when shit got rough.

Half of it’s gone when Jacob sits down in front of the cage and fucking smirks at her.

“Seven days,” Jacob says, his voice the same cold drawl that always comes over the radio. “You must be hun _gry_.”

She glares at him and doesn’t respond.

Staci looks from her to Jacob and back again, hands clasped so hard his knuckles are white, then he takes a breath and moves to stand by Jacob’s side. Mattie keeps her eyes on him as she listens to Jacob’s monologue, watching as he picks up a knife and studies it before bringing the edge of it to Jacob’s neck.

 _Slit his throat,_ she wants to say, tries to tell him with her eyes, but he doesn’t look at her. 

“Did you know it takes ten days for civilization to collapse? Yup. You take away a man’s basic needs and he’ll revert to his primordial instincts in just ten days. It’s a difficult thing to understand unless you’ve lived it,” he adds, and Mattie wants to spit at him. What the fuck does he think she’s been _doing?_

“I was in Iraq during the first Gulf War,” he says, ignoring the dry scrape of Staci’s blade across his throat. “82nd Airborne, All-Americans, hoo-rah. One night, there was an ambush. Me’n this guy named Miller got separated from the unit, no food, no radio. Nearest base… two hundred klicks to the south, so we just start walkin’.”

Staci finishes tidying Jacob’s beard and goes to stand behind him again, hands clasped in front, head down. Mattie watches him instead of Jacob, doesn’t care whatever the fuck Jacob’s up to by telling her his sad fuckin’ backstory, just cares about how she’s going to get herself and Staci out of here at the same time.

“Well, by the third day I knew we were lost. Day six… ran out of water. You know what that’s like, don’tcha? Difficult to swallow.”

She does snap her gaze to him when he takes a long swig of water from a canteen and then spits it out just in front of her cage. Her lips are so dry she’s afraid they’re going to be permanently cracked, and he’s just spitting water for shits and giggles as part of his ongoing psychological torture experiment.

He might be the worst Seed.

“On the seventh day, Miller’s legs started going all wonky.” He moves in his chair to face her more directly, like he’s excited to tell this part of the story and wants to make sure she’s _really_ paying attention. “Did ya know your brain starts to eat your muscles in order to survive?” He chuckles, looks her up and down once in a way she absolutely does _not_ fucking care for, and adds, “That’s why you’re so goddamn skinny.”

She bares her teeth to him, and he smiles right back.

“And by the eighth day, the wolves were closing in, and I looked at Miller and I could tell we’re as good as dead. And I accepted that. And in that acceptance… came clarity. You see, I wasn’t just looking at Miller.” He stands, reaching through the bars of the cage to grab the front of her shirt, twisting and pulling as he goes to haul her to her feet. “I was looking at an opportunity. It wasn’t something I wanted… it was something that I had to do. It was… it was my test. Now you see, Miller’s sacrifice wasn’t about me walking out of that desert—”

Here, Staci hands Jacob the music box. He doesn’t look at Mattie when he does it, even though she sends him a look of outraged betrayal. How could he? Right now? While she’s trying to help him?

Jacob starts to wind the box as he talks, and she steps away, covering her ears with her hands. She can barely hear Jacob’s words, the growling of the wolf next to her. “It was about bringing me here. The weak have their purpose. You’ll understand that soon enough.”

He opens the music box, and she falls unconscious. 

There was bliss in the meat.

\---

“Wake up, wake up! Open your eyes!”

She does, obedient still, bliss just faded out of her system enough for her to be able to force her body back to consciousness. She aches all over, her muscles, her stomach, her lips, her scalp… 

The phantom hotel comes back to her, the one she fought through before, the one she fought through again. Jacob’s voice praising her as she killed stranger after stranger, Staci yelling for her to kill, to hunt, to sacrifice.

“Wake up! Rook!”

Staci’s here, now, frantic whispers and hushed voice unlike how he was before. She rolls onto her front, forces herself up onto her hands and knees, then up to her feet as Staci pulls something out of his pocket and holds it up.

“I’m gonna get you out of here, okay?” She just stares, silent. Is this a trap? Why now? “And we’re gonna get out of here, okay? Only you. Only you.”

Oh, Staci. Oh, _Staci._

Even with what she’s lived through, she can’t imagine what Jacob’s done to him.

He’s finding his strength, fighting back, saving her life and saving his even though she came here to help him. She’s too tired to keep the tears from her eyes, just lets them well and spill over silently as Staci unlocks her cage and snaps at another man who wants to escape.

“You have to get out of here _before it starts again._ ” He sounds desperate, wild, almost feral, and she wipes at her face with dirty hands and nods at him, still silent, still obedient.

He tells her to follow him, and she does, winding through the compound without speaking another word to each other. She watches the way he walks, shoulders still hunched, eyes constantly scanning for people, watching to make sure he has everything right and they can really escape this time.

She thought Jacob broke him, but Staci was just biding his time.

She brushes away more tears as they walk into a building through a back door, pausing long enough for Staci to lock it back behind them so they won’t be followed, then up rickety stairs into an inner room.

Jacob’s room.

Mattie pushes the door shut behind her and Staci grabs her shoulders to stop her, to pull her attention to him.

“He knows you’re ready,” he says. “To do it. Look.” He pulls her to the closest desk, taps a picture of Eli right on the forehead. “The trials. See?” He pulls her to a map on the wall, covered with annotations, red string, pictures of Whitetail members. “He’s got it all planned out. He mimes holding a shotgun, gestures as he starts to talk faster and faster, “One, two, three. One two three. Onetwothree then he’s got you. It becomes second nature. Routine. He _gets_ in your _head._ And you don’t even realize it.”

She shakes her head at him and he grabs her shoulders again. He shakes her, not hard, just enough to drive his point home. “You can’t go back, you understand?”

He tries to walk away and she follows him, stumbling over her own feet when he turns back and raises his voice. “You can’t _ever_ go back!” Another tear slips free and he holds up a hand, a placating gesture that does little to calm her nerves. “Come on. The truck’s gotta be there, gotta get on the truck.”

He hands her a duffel bag, and she takes it, not sure what’s happening.

“It’s almost time.” He tugs her again, pulls her out onto a balcony overlooking the front drive of the compound, holds her elbow as he says, “I studied the route for weeks.”

She believes him. He’s had weeks to study it.

There’s a truck sitting across the circular drive, someone sitting patiently in the front seat. 

It’s their escape. It’s so close she can taste it, taste the freedom. She’ll be able to get Staci back to Jude, back to Joey, back to Earl and safety.

“It’s the only way out. You’ll be safe if you don’t—”

Far off cries cut him short, and he turns. Cold sweat breaks out over her body, dread seeping through every pore.

They know she’s gone.

Only one person would have let her out.

They’re coming.

“No, no, no, no, NO! Not yet, not yet!” Alarms blare, lights start to flash, the truck below them starts to move. Staci’s panicking, his plan unraveling, and she doesn’t know what to do or even what the plan was to start.

“Staci,” she croaks, voice so hoarse she barely makes any noise. “Staci?”

He doesn’t sound like he hears her, murmuring a heartfelt _fuck_ as he tugs at his hair.

_Only you… can make the world seem bright…_

Her vision starts to flash red, pricks of white light floating around the edges, and she tries to reach for him, but he’s screaming and covering his ears.

It’s like he snaps out of it completely when her fingertips brush his elbow.

He stands up straight, arms by his side, and he stares at her, head cocked to the side. He says, simply, “Sorry,” and then pushes her off the balcony.

She falls without even a scream, unafraid but still trying to pull him with her, and hits the back of the leaving truck hard enough to go unconscious.

At least the song can’t reach her here.

\---

She’s not sure how long she’s been unconscious, but it’s daytime, and when she rolls to stand she falls off the top of the truck and knocks her shoulder out of socket. She howls through gritted teeth, pushes herself upright while she holds her useless left arm with her right hand.

Her radio squawks alive from the duffle still looped around her shoulders.

_“Deputy, you copy? It’s Eli. I dunno where you’ve gone and disappeared to, but shit, we really kicked the hornet’s nest. I know you’re probably out there trying to get your friend Pratt back, but us Whitetails could still use a hand. Anyways. You know where to find us. Talk soon. Over and out.”_

His voice disappears in a burst of static, and she kicks a nearby rock in a fit of impotent rage.

Staci said she can’t go back, but she can’t stay away. She can’t kill Jacob without their help, can’t get him to come out of the Veteran’s Center to get him away from his men without their support. Saving Staci and stopping the cult’s activities here all hinges on killing Jacob Seed.

She kicks the rock again and sets out walking along the center of the road towards the Wolf’s Den, still cradling her left arm.

\---

Sharky meets her down the hill from the militia hideout, hat missing and face grim. He skids to a stop in front of her, but she just keeps going until she bumps into his chest and leans her entire weight against him, trusting him to hold her up. He does, arms around her back and chin on top of her head. She ignores the lingering pain and nuzzles her face into his chest, inhaling to get his scent deep into her lungs.

“Jacob gotcha?” Sharky’s voice is a whisper, or as close to a whisper as he ever gets, and she nods against his chest. His arms tighten around her, jostling her bad shoulder. She whines but doesn’t pull away, doesn’t tell him what the problem is because she doesn’t want him to push her back.

“Last time, I woke up in Boshaw Manor. This time, Hurky and I woke up at the radar station still, hungover’n cold, and you weren’t anywhere we could find you.” She tucks her face harder against his chest as he continues carefully, like he’s choosing each word before he says it instead of spitting them all out like he usually does. “We looked… all over the mountain for you, talked to that girl who runs the bait shop now, and the guy at the FANG Center, and Jess, and I like her’n all, but she’s scary sometimes…” He cuts himself off and she feels him sigh before he starts again. “How did Jacob manage to get you without hurting the rest of us?”

Silence stretches between them, Sharky holding out longer than she’d have guessed was possible before she makes herself answer.

“I just… I knew he was coming for me, so I just went out and had a smoke after you fell asleep.”

Another long, long pause.

“So he would have an easier time kidnapping you?”

“So you wouldn’t get hurt.” She does pull away then, standing up straight and taking a half-step back so she can see him. His lips are pressed together in a thin line, lines around his eyes deepening the longer she watches him. “Sharky, I—”

“I can’t get hurt,” he says, cutting her off, voice getting louder. She tries to shush him, but he keeps going, talking over her: “We could’ve stopped them from taking you! You didn’t have to give up!”

“I didn’t give up, Sharky! I was just trying to keep you safe.”

“You let them take you away from me!”

“They were going to take me anyway! They have every other time! I just saved you having to drive back over here from the Henbane!” She’s too tired for this, and tears pool in her eyes once more, spilling over and wetting her cheeks.

“Shit, Mat, I wanna keep you safe too. You understand?” She nods, miserable. “You think I felt safer runnin’ around the mountain looking for you?”

She shakes her head, miserable. “I’m sorry.”

He heaves a heavy sigh, reaches out with both hands to wipe at her tears. She leans into the touch, sniffling, and follows him when he says, “C’mon, let’s get your arm looked at.”

Inside the Wolf’s Den, Eli pops her shoulder back into socket for her, grimacing sympathetically when she suddenly bursts into tears at the feeling. He leaves her alone with Tylenol and Sharky and permission to use the Den’s showers, and then he makes himself scarce.

By the time she’s taken her medicine and emerged clean from the shower, Sharky’s smiling again, argument apparently forgotten. She curls up against his chest and goes to sleep, exhausted down to her very bones.

She doesn’t know what else to do.

\---

They spend two more days in the Wolf’s Den, radios off, letting Mattie gain her strength back. She sleeps more than she has since the helicopter crash, waking up every now and then to find Sharky and cuddle up against him once more. He sits, patient and vibrating with energy, combing his fingers through her hair until she finally wakes up to eat.

They make love quietly the morning before they leave, murmured words of love and apology passed from kiss to kiss with each breath. He moves inside her with slow thrusts while she clings to his shoulders, legs locked around the back of his thighs, muffling their moans with lips pressed tight together.

She comes near silent, just a gasp of Shaky’s name in his ear, and he follows her, burying a moan into the side of her neck as he spills fruitlessly into his condom.

They dress quietly, check their weapons and ammunition before moving to find Eli. They find Wheaty first, who pushes through a face red enough to let her know they weren’t as quiet as they thought to ask for more vinyl if they find it, and then they find Eli who points to more things on their map for them to take care of, someone at the old Grandview that needs to be rescued.

It’s really never ending.

They leave without an argument.

\---

Jess finds them again near the hotel, announces her presence by shooting a rabbit as it tries to run across the path in front of Mattie and disappear into the underbrush. Mattie freezes when the rabbit falls dead, then turns and glares behind her as Jess emerges from the tree line with a grin.

“Well, fuck you, too,” Mattie greets. 

Jess snickers. “You had Sharky all worked up while you was gone. I thought you could use a good scare.”

Mattie grimaces, then gives Jess a light punch to the arm. If she was anyone else, she’d give her a hug. “Comin’ with?”

“Yep.” Jess picks up the rabbit and pulls her arrow free. “Figured you could use the help.”

“Thanks, man!” Sharky says, sounding as cheerful as ever.

She cocks her head and looks up at him from under her hood. “You got your flamethrowin’ license, Sharky?”

He beams at her, absolutely grins with all his teeth showing, and Mattie’s already muffling her laugh when he says, “I don’t need one.”

Jess looks from Sharky to Mattie, who nods with a shrug, still laughing because this is so far out of her control and the opposite of what she thought her life in Hope County would be like, and then she looks back at Sharky and deadpans, “Well that’s fucken terrifying.”

Sharky booms with laughter, and the girls join him. The sound attracts something from nearby, the underbrush rustling in a way that makes Mattie pull her handgun up in case it’s one of those white wolves, and then Boomer leaps out from behind the nearest tree onto the they’re on and spins in an excited circle. 

“Oh, there’s my boy!” Mattie holsters her gun again and reaches for Boomer with both hands. He jumps up to put muddy front paws on her chest and licks her face while she laughs and scratches behind his ears.

Behind her, Sharky makes a vague noise of disgust. “You know dogs spend most of the day licking their own assholes, right?”

“Oh, like you wouldn’t do the same if you could.” She glances over her shoulder at him and winks as he splutters and then bursts into laughter again, grinning and shooting a wink at Jess who looks like she isn’t sure whether she should laugh or be disgusted too. She settles on a sigh and a little chuckle, and Mattie considers the joke a success.

With their little group now twice as large, it takes them a few more minutes to get settled into a plan, but they agree to take the Grandview back the same way they took the Elk Jaw Lodge. It’s a solid plan, one that’s proven to work, and they walk the rest of the way there with as much silence as they can possibly manage.

(It’s not much silence. Sharky chatters and Jess sends back sarcastic comments while Mattie tries to muffle her laughter. It’s a wonder Jacob’s men don’t intercept them on the way to the hotel.)

The place is crawling with peggies even before they get there, and they spend a good thirty minutes scouting the place out before even making plans. Mattie watches the guards through her binoculars, checks out the stacks of materials waiting outside, tries to figure out the best way to get in without anyone getting hurt.

Just because they always start over again doesn’t mean it’s pleasant.

She wants to avoid that gun wrenching pain of seeing Sharky bleeding out. If she never feels that kind of anguish again, it’ll be too soon.

She leaves Jess covering the outside of the building, picking off stray peggies, and sneaks into the hotel with her pistol in her hand. She plays the world’s worst game of hide and seek with the cultists inside, sneaking around behind their backs, hiding behind furniture, ducking behind open doors and holding her breath when cultists get too close.

The man she was sent to find is tied to a chair on the third floor, unguarded, surrounded by a sound system set up to play one of Jacob’s lessons over and over while the same images she remembers from her first kidnapping session play on a loop. There’s blood dripping down his face from his eyes and his ears, and seeing him there makes a chill go down her spine, nausea roll in her stomach. 

This is where Eli and Wheaty found her.

This is what they were doing to her.

She switches the tape he was being forced to listen to with the one Wheaty gave her, and the soothing sounds of metal music blast through the hotel’s sound system. 

She turns the volume up.

Fuck the peggies.

The lyrics of “Get Free” echo around the property, and she can’t hear over it to see where anyone else is. She lowers herself to a crouch and tries to go out the way she came, but a peggie literally trips over her as they try to walk through the same door at the same time.

His steel-toed boot makes solid contact with her calf and they both fall, but she recovers faster, spinning to put herself on top of him before he can use his size against her. She pulls a knife free of her boot and shoves it straight through the soft part of his throat and rips it out again. He gurgles, eyes wide and blood spewing from the wound and his mouth to splash against her face, but she can’t even bring herself to care. 

She stabs him again to put an end to his misery, wipes her blade on his shirt, and tucks it back in its place.

Once she makes it to the second floor, she can hear the peggies scrambling, shrieking at each other to be heard over the music, and she uses their distraction to start picking them off one by one.

Eli’s voice comes over her radio and she has to duck behind a couch and hold the receiver up to her ear to hear him warning her more peggies are coming from the lake with boats _and_ helicopters.

They really don’t want her to take this hotel from them, but they’re shit out of luck.

Whatever hell she’s trapped in means they have absolutely no way of winning.

_I’m gonna get free, I’m gonna get free, I’m gonna--_

She’s exhausted to the point of shaking by the time the last peggie sniper is dead and Eli radios back to let her know his men are coming to get Briggs. She hasn’t fully recovered from her last trip to Jacob’s compound, her body protesting the abuse by threatening to shut down no matter what’s happening around her, with cold sweat dripping into her eyes and bile at the back of her throat.

Sharky spots her first as soon as she steps out of the tree line back into the Grandview’s parking lot, thrusts his shotgun into Jess’ surprised hands so he can jog over and catch Mattie when the vertigo makes her too weak to stand up. She falls forward into his embrace, and he scoops her up like she weighs nothing.

Maybe Jacob’s right and she is too goddamn skinny.

The thought makes her giggle, then she can’t stop, nearly delirious as Sharky carries her inside and sets her down on a couch that’s covered in dust and blood. He starts pawing at her face and torso, checking for wounds as she squeezes her eyes closed and tries to force herself to stop laughing. 

“This ain’t funny,” he snaps, voice tense and gruff. 

“I’m fine! I’m fine!” Mattie tries to protest but he doesn’t listen, and when she opens her eyes to give him a reassuring smile Jess is standing almost directly above her looking right down at her too.

Eli’s voice comes back over the radio, praising her even as Jess and Sharky try to figure out whether she’s actually injured or not. She manages to wave them off and grabs for her radio again, the world not spinning so fast now that she’s horizontal.

_“You know, you proved everyone wrong, Dep, everyone except me. Always knew you were the real deal. I’ll see you back at the Den, soldier. Take care.”_

Mattie’s just pushing the talk button down to say she needs some time before they can make it back when she hears the tell-tale _thwap_ of an arrow flying by and finding its mark. Jess drops from Mattie’s field of vision with a silent cry, mouth open and eyes unseeing as a peggie arrow ends her life as unceremoniously as Mattie has ended every peggie’s life so far.

Mattie opens her mouth to scream for Sharky, but he’s already starting to pull Mattie from the couch to shield her body with his. She lets him manipulate her the way he wants, even though she knows it’s useless. She wraps her arms around him and presses a kiss to his cheek as more arrows sail through open windows and hit the couch, the wall behind them, and finally his shoulder.

She tries to yank it free, more worried about the bliss on the tip than any blood loss that will follow its removal, but he goes limp over her. Her body runs cold again, reacting even though she knows he’ll likely wake up in the hotel with a headache and anger at the peggies, and she bites her tongue until she feels blood to keep herself from screaming.

They should have just run.

An arrow hits her shoulder as she starts to shimmy out from under Sharky’s body, and she makes it halfway out before unconsciousness claims her. 


	9. Chapter 9

It takes Mattie a few minutes to remember where she is when she finally opens her eyes again. She remembers being at the Wolf’s Den — no, she was at the Grandview, with Sharky and Jess and Boomer, and they rescued Briggs, and…

Oh.

She rolls onto her side, muscles protesting the action, and waits for her eyes to adjust to the darkness of Jacob’s compound. There’s hardly any moonlight illuminating the cages, and it takes several minutes before she thinks she can see Jacob’s music box sitting right at the edge of the cage, within reach if she could just get over there to grab it.

Can she?

She tries, she really does, pushing herself up onto hands and knees and reaching through the bars, fingers spread and grasping, and she nearly makes it before a heavy booted foot comes out of nowhere and smashes her hand into the gravel.

She doesn’t scream, won’t give Jacob that satisfaction, but tears well in her eyes as the sting of breaking bones makes its way to her brain. That she can’t help, and she can’t help the way she cradles her hand to her chest as she glares up at him.

The fucker is smirking at her.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be outta here soon enough.”

Jesus fuck, she hates him.

“I hate you,” she says, as though she’s a child and he’s one of her brothers playing a mean prank.

His smirk grows briefly into a smile, but he doesn’t say anything in response. His expression is schooled as he scoops the box up and toys with the winding mechanism, threat clear and unspoken before he opens his mouth.

“Did you think you were free?” He winds the box with practiced motions, looking down at it before he glances sideways at her. “Your little buddy? Went to a whole lotta trouble for nothing. But that’s okay. He knows better now.” He finishes winding the box and turns to her fully, standing over her with all of his imposing form carefully calculated to keep her afraid.

She’s not afraid. She’s angry.

She is _Wrath._

“I told you you’re not a hero. You are a _tool._ Now, you know your purpose. You’ve known it from the beginning.” 

He smiles at her as he opens the box, like he’s happy with her, like he’s pleased. The music plays and pain lances through her head, like the worst headache she’s ever gotten, like the migraines her daddy used to get that he said felt like someone was squeezing his head in a vice and trying to put an icepick in through his eyeball at the same time.

She wants to go forward and rip the music box out of his hands for good, but she falls back instead, and the icky familiar darkness of one of Jacob’s trials overwhelms her.

As soon as she gets out of this, she’s murdering Jacob. She doesn’t care what else happens.

\---

The first few areas of the trial are the same, comforting almost.

It’s like Staci said. _One two three, one two three, onetwothree, ONETWOTHREE._

It’s not hard to make the Whitetails fall in front of her. One shot does it, every time. She can hear a clock ticking, she can hear that song, she can hear Jacob crooning in her ear about how good she is, how good she’s doing, how strong she is.

“Good job,” he says as she darts forward to snap the neck of a nameless Whitetail who had been hiding behind the counter in the bunker kitchen. “Cull the herd.”

That militia member was _weak,_ hiding like that, like a little boy who should still be at home with his parents.

He should be at home with his parents, but he isn’t. He’s with Eli, with the Whitetails, because he’s trying to fight back against Jacob. Jacob’s men probably killed his parents, and now she’s killed him.

She stops and stares at him, at his lifeless brown eyes, slack jaw, neck bent at an unnatural angle, legs folded under him where she dropped him. He’s just a baby, a teenager, and she killed him and, just for a moment, let Jacob make her feel _good_ about it.

“Watch your time!” Jacob doesn’t sound proud anymore. He sounds annoyed, put out, like his prize wolf suddenly stopped doing its job and needs to be put down.

She snaps back to attention, pulling her pistol free of its holster and moving deeper into the bunker, following the hallways that she’s come to know so well. Her feet don’t make noise against the concrete like they do when she’s really there; she can’t hear the ordinary chatter of a small bunker filled with people.

All she can hear is the song.

She finishes clearing most of the bunker and comes around the last corner, ready to finish this and move on to killing Jacob, when… she stops.

Eli is there, his compound bow in his hands, his eyes open in shock.

“No, don’t shoot!” 

It’s his voice, it’s his voice, is she here? Is she here? 

The other men she fought didn’t speak back to her.

Time slows; she doesn’t. She raises her pistol and aims, then lowers it again.

She can’t do this.

She can’t.

The bunker goes black, and Jacob’s voice speaks directly in her ear.

“Try again.”

She _can’t._

She has to.

She has to.

\---

Jacob’s getting impatient. She can hear it in his voice, how his compliments have become terse and far between, how his commands to _move faster_ and to _do better_ are spoken lower and lower until he’s growling.

She doesn’t want to try harder. She doesn’t want to do better, to kill faster, to push down that sense of remorse that tells her this isn’t fucking worth it.

Eli’s at the end of this, and she can bring herself to kill enough people to get to kill him too.

She makes stupid mistakes, she moves too slow, she lets the wolves get her and shotgun shells find her and, once, that same teenage boy smash her head into the bunker’s floor.

It takes five tries before Jacob finds the right button to push to spur her forward.

“You know, Peaches was so goddamn sure you’d be the one to bring us down. He risked his life for you, and for what? You can’t even pass the last trial, and he’s learning his lesson without food or water.”

Mattie bares her teeth to nothing, angry, goddamn fucking furious at the idea of Staci punished for what he did to help her. Where is he being held without food and _fucking water?_ She’s only been free of Jacob’s clutches for a few days — is it three? Or four? She may still have time to get Staci before he dies of thirst. Jacob said he _is_ learning his lesson, not that he _learned_ his lesson. Maybe… 

Maybe…

The trial starts again and she kills the two men in the first room without a thought, senseless murders that make her feel nothing. 

She feels nothing but rage, and that rage pushes her through the trials like nothing else has. 

One two three, one two three, onetwothree.

Train, hunt, kill.

Sacrifice.

“No, don’t shoot!”

She doesn’t hesitate before she shoots Eli, ready to get out of this training exercise and go back to the Wolf’s Dean. 

The second her bullet hits Eli’s flesh, time slows down again. Jacob’s in front of her, smiling, singing, pushing the barrel of her gun down to the floor. He keeps a hand on it so that when she jerks it up to shoot him too, it doesn’t move.

“Hey, only you could have gotten this close,” he says, a stupid grin on his stupid face. She feels a surge of pride that she pushes down, refuses to let show on her face, as he explains he’s done with her now, that she’s served her purpose, that she’s passed her test.

“But now you’re alone,” he says, his smile growing. She tries to, but she can’t move, physically pinned in place. “And you’re weak. And we know what happens to the weak.”

Yeah. They get culled. But she’s not as weak as he thinks. The secret weapon that’s been refusing to let her die, that power that’s been on her side, is going to carry her through this. She just has to trust in it.

“I’ll be outside waiting for you,” he says, and then he walks off, humming that song, and she watches him go and imagines tearing out his throat.

When he disappears and time speeds up again, she’s still in the Wolf’s Den, still standing in front of Eli, a gun that isn’t hers still in her hands.

Eli is on the floor, motionless, blood pooling under his lifeless body. It wells and runs, following the slight natural slope to the bunker floor, running toward the lowest point in the room.

Wheaty is screaming at her, a gun in his hand, the barrel against her forehead. She doesn’t fight it because why would she? He can’t hurt her. If he does, she deserves it. She doesn’t care that the safety’s off, that his finger is on the trigger, that even if he doesn’t mean to shoot her he still might just by accident.

She’s been shot in the head before. As far as ways to die go, it isn’t so bad. The _black white black_ turns it into a headache, turns it into a distant memory, and honestly? That emptiness sounds nice right now.

She’d rather be in that nothingness than here, watching Wheaty’s eyes well with tears, listening to him starting to wail about Eli.

Tammy saves her life, but it’s only a practical move. She doesn’t really want Mattie to stay alive — she wants Mattie to kill Jacob.

Mattie wants to kill Jacob too. 

This she can do.

She’s numb, nauseated, angry, trembling when she walks out of the bunker back into what should be the fresh air of the Whitetail mountains. Instead, she finds herself swimming through layers of bliss as _Only You_ blasts over speakers set up all around her.

Jacob knew where the Wolf’s Den was.

He always knew.

He wanted Eli dead in the way that would cause the most damage possible. The deputy, the savior of Hope County, murdering the leader of the Whitetail Militia in cold blood? How can the resistance survive something like that? Its top member turning on one of its leaders?

Mattie destroys the first wolf beacon without a problem, but when four wolves run at her at once she panics. She drops her gun and swings her fists instead, as though her bare knuckles will do anything against claws and teeth… and finds they disappear as soon as she touches them, products of the bliss and her own terrified mind.

She thinks she sees Jacob as she walks to the next beacon, and fury overrides common sense as she jumps for him. She snaps his neck in the most satisfying moment of her life, and there’s a brief second where she holds him lifeless in her arms before he disappears too.

“Son of a _bitch_.”

She hears his voice after that, or she thinks she does, his words mingling with the song coming through the speakers. Is he sitting nearby, amused as his game, celebrating his victory by playing with her until she wears herself out running around and dodging imaginary enemies? 

“The Whitetails are nothing without Eli. _You_ are _nothing_ without Eli.”

She’s throwing herself at the figments of her imagination like a housefly banging its body uselessly against a closed window, doomed to run out of energy and die on the windowsill, buggy feet up in the air, wings locked behind it.

“Don’t you find it ironic how everyone you help winds up worse off? Eli, Pratt… Tragedy just follows you. If you really wanted to keep people safe, be a hero, you’d just… off yourself. Safer for everyone that way.”

She laughs at that, unhinged, all teeth and wild eyes and bared fingernails. That was never an option, and if he knew her psyche as well as he thought he did, he’d understand that. 

She’s fought through too much to let a bunch of fuckheads like the Seeds bring her down now when her life was finally starting to work out.

She’d rather murder them all and mount their heads in front of the Spread Eagle than give up like that.

It takes a few minutes after the last wolf beacon is destroyed for her head to clear, for the beauty of the mountains to come back. She’s panting, sweating, her shirt soaked through from how much energy she exerted fighting absolutely nothing.

The remains of the beacon are still there, though, and at least she didn’t imagine that. There are some supplies still there, half-empty crates left behind by peggies who were too busy to fight her. She scavenges bullets and a water bottle that someone had started drinking from and then abandoned, and germs are so far from her mind that she doesn’t even think about it before opening the bottle and drinking the last few ounces down in one long pull.

The next peggie that gets close to her gets his neck snapped. He’s real, solid under her fingers, not like any of the apparitions that she put down. His body falls heavy to the dirt, his head cracking against a boulder as an insult to injury — or injury to insult?

This is all a fucking disgrace.

There’s a laser sight on the rock next to her, and she ducks, throwing herself to the dirt like she wouldn’t come back if she happened to get shot between the eyes. Jacob’s voice crackles over the radio, telling everyone her location.

It’s time to put down his _prize fighter._

She’s going to put him down first.

She creeps from rocky outcropping to rocky outcropping, avoiding Jacob’s sniper rifle and heading inexorably closer to the hill he’s set himself up on. She puts down his wolves — big and white and scary but emaciated and weak from whatever hell he puts himself through — and she puts down his men with equal dispassion, 

She’s nearly to the base of the mountain when a peggie distracts her enough for Jacob to get a shot in. She sees the laser sight against the peggie before it disappears, but the peggie’s hands are on her and she can’t move before Jacob takes his shot.

_Black. White. Red. Black. White._

_It hurts. Oh god, it hurts._

_Please let this be the last time._

_I can’t fucking do this again. I can’t._

_What do I have to do to make this stop?_

_Tell me and I’ll do it._

_Black. White. Red._

_You can do better. You can do better._

_White._

The remains of the beacon are still there, next to her again. There are some supplies still there too, the half-empty crates left behind by peggies holding the same bullets and half-drunk water bottles. She scavenges what she needs again before opening the bottle and drinking the last few ounces down in one long pull.

The next peggie that gets close to her gets his neck snapped.

She doesn’t stop to think about how real he is, or how it feels to take a human life with her bare hands, or how if she has to go through the _black white black_ again she might literally go crazy if she hasn’t already. She just fights, she just pushes forward.

She just survives.

Jacob loses sight of her when she gets close enough to his hill, and she climbs up the back of it without worrying about falling to her death.

Really, what’s the point in that fear now? She’ll just wake up and climb up it again.

He’s facing away from her when she gets on top, and she shoots him in his gun arm without waiting.

He drops his gun, turns to her with a pained laugh.

He doesn’t look afraid. He looks like she feels: resigned.

“My brother saw all this coming. I don’t know if he talks to God… that doesn’t matter. He was _right._ Humanity is once again in crisis.”

She shoots him again, this time in the stomach. He pushes his good hand against the wound and laughs again, blood staining his lips as he half-sits, half-collapses.

“You did everything he said you would do. And you didn’t even know it. You had no fucking clue.” His breaths sound wet, forced in and out of his lungs by sheer force of will, a sheer refusal to die so strong it rivals her own. 

She puts her gun away, pulls out her knife, twirls it around her fingers.

“Guess you’re Strong after all,” he says, and smiles at her with blood-stained teeth like it’s a compliment.

“And you’re Weak. You know what happens to the Weak, right?” She throws his words back at him as she approaches him slowly, still playing with the blade, trying to decide if she should put him out of his misery or watch him slowly bleed out.

He blinks up at her, blue eyes reflecting the sky back at her. He doesn’t stop smiling.

“When you told John that you’re a god,” he asks, voice rough enough to make her feel just a little smug, “what did you mean? It drove him crazy, right up until the end. Wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop talking about it.”

Mattie stands just in front of him and pushes the tip of her knife under his chin. She presses up, tilting his head back, and he moves with her, unwilling despite what he said about being a sacrifice to put himself in too much danger. 

“I meant what I said. I _am_ a fucking god. I can’t be killed. I died just trying to get up here, you know. You shot me in the fucking head. But I’m Stronger than that — I won’t stay dead. That’s my secret. You’re all going to lose, because you’re not meant to win. I am.”

Jacob sighs, makes a thoughtful noise like a grumble from deep within his chest.

She moves her knife from his chin to his ear, catches the tip of the knife under the cartilage at the top. “You know, before I killed John, I managed to shoot him right here. I was aiming for his head, of course, but this is where the bullet grazed him.”

A sharp movement and the knife slices through his ear. He doesn’t flinch, even when blood slowly wells and then starts to drip, the dark red disappearing into the orange of his beard.

“Now you match. Tell him I’ll see him when I finally make it to hell.”

Jacob gives her one last smile before she slips her blade into his neck, tearing out his throat and putting him out of his misery.

Putting them _both_ out of their misery.

She’s covered in his blood, sprayed with it nearly from head to toe, and she calmly leans to the side and throws up that half-bottle of water she drank a few minutes ago.

She spits and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand before she staggers a few steps away and sits in the sparse, dry grass.

She props her elbows on her knees and stares at the sky, watching a single fluffy cloud drift across her field of vision.

Tammy’s voice crackles over the radio, tinny and staticky, and Mattie pulls the little box closer to her ear so she can listen better. _“Deputy, I don’t know if ‘thank you’ is the right thing to say, but… Well, Eli's death won’t be in vain now. I’m sorry about what happened. Truly, you ain’t the only one to blame.”_ Mattie gasps as her tears come, pouring over her cheeks and dripping off her chin. _“Now ain’t the time to mourn or point fingers. That Deputy Pratt of yours and a whole bunch of our Whitetails are wasting away in Jacob’s armory. Get moving. We’re counting on you.”_

Maybe if she just sits here this will all be over.

Maybe if she just… gives up, she can stop fighting.

Maybe if she just sits here long enough, Eli will climb back up from the floor of the bunker, find himself alive and confused, and everyone will forget what happened. She can carry the guilt inside of her, but she’ll be the only one who knows.

None of the peggies she’s ever killed have come back. John hasn’t come back. Jacob won’t come back.

Eli… why would Eli come back?

She gives herself exactly sixty seconds to feel bad for herself before she’s back on her feet and heading back to Jacob’s body. She pulls his weapons from him, checks their quality and modifications, replaces her older weapons with his bright red ones.

She killed him.

She deserves this.

She slips the key over his head without breaking the cord, puts it on around her neck and lets it rest heavy against her chest.

Jude is waiting for her when she gets to the bottom of the hill nearest the bunker. She stops and stares at him, a good ten feet between them, silence stretching even deeper as she waits to see what he’ll do.

“You heard Tammy,” he tells her, then reaches to pick something up off the ground by his feet. It’s a single bulletproof vest, about her size, and he holds it out to her. “I’m coming with you.”

It’s not a question, it’s a statement. He’s coming with her whether she wants him to or not, so she heaves a sigh and nods and rubs at her tired eyes. “Let’s go get him.”

They drive over to Jacob’s armory together, Mattie in the passenger seat, Jacob’s key clutched in her shaking hands. The silence hangs heavy between them, dread and anticipation coiling in their hearts.

Staci’s life hangs in the balance, and the only thing between her and him is however many times she has to die to pull him out of there.

She can do this.

Jude parks down the road from the armory, just veers over into the dirt and stops the car. A heartbeat of silence passes between them before Mattie draws in a deep breath.

“You done this before? Something this big, I mean?”

She turns toward Jude, watches as his fingers tighten and relax around the steering wheel, his knuckles blanching and then turning red again. “Did two tours in Afghanistan, one in Iraq. Thought those days were behind me when my contract was up, but…” He makes an annoyed noise by sucking on his teeth, eyes glued to the road right where it curves. “But, uh, no, not since all this shit started up. Any tips?”

He looks at her then, eyes tired and skin under them dark. He hasn’t been sleeping, probably hasn’t been since this whole thing started. 

She knows at least some of how that feels.

“Stay low when we first approach, scope them out to see what they’re doing. Jacob’s men are better trained than John’s, but they still aren’t professionals. They tend to be easy to pick off if you can be quiet enough. I have the key, so as long as we can get through the courtyard, we can get inside.”

Jude’s nodding, staring out the windshield again.

“There will probably be fewer guards inside, but we’ll have to be quiet to figure out where they’re keeping prisoners. We have to get everyone out, not just Staci.”

“Jacob almost never took prisoners to his bunker, not according to our intel,” Jude says. “He preferred to keep them at the Grandview or at the Veteran’s Center.”

“Good. That’ll make things easier. Once we get the bunker taken care of, we can go back for the Grandview. Sound like a plan?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

They hop out of the car and make their way over to the armory’s driveway, crouch low in the grass to stare. Jude uses the scope on his sniper rifle while Mattie sits cross-legged next to him with her binoculars in her hands and her elbows on the boulder that’s providing them with half cover.

“Where’d you learn to do all this, anyway?” She flinches at the sudden sound of his voice, but he’s quiet enough. “You serve too?”

She laughs, a short, bitter sound. “Oh, I learned on the job, pal. The threat of getting confessed was enough to light a fire under my ass.”

He makes a considering noise. “Staci always said you were tougher than you looked.”

Mattie smiles at this, but turns her full focus back to the job at hand. There are only five peggies she can see guarding the entrance, but that seems too few. John had at least a dozen outside of his, but maybe he was more scared of her than Jacob was.

“Okay, see who you can pick off from here. I’m moving a little closer.”

She does just that, leaving him behind. She hears the quiet report of his rifle, the bullet as silent as it possibly can be, but she doesn’t hear the sound of a peggie being hit. More importantly, she doesn’t hear the sound of an alert going up.

She sneaks in a little closer, climbs up around the side of the armory to take out one of the men she saw through her binoculars. He looks surprised, in the moments before his death, and she’s not sure if it’s because of who she is or because he wasn’t expecting to have his neck broke period, but either way, she savors the look on his face right when he realizes what’s happening.

What does that mean about her? What is Hope County turning her into?

She pushes down the little voice in her head that says _monster, monster_ and keeps her head down as she looks for the next peggie to nab. She’s pretty sure she can trust Jude not to shoot her on accident, but… 

This is faster.

She manages to take down a second peggie before the commotion starts up closer to the entrance, screams that let her know Jude’s been spotted.

She heads that way at a sprint, standing tall, leaping over low crates instead of taking the time to go around them. She’s pretty sure Jude will come back too if Sharky and Boomer will, but if she can get to him in time to take him into the bunker with her…

The butt of a peggie rifle stops her in her tracks as it slams into her middle. It knocks the wind out of her, all the breath rushing out of her lungs as her diaphragm seizes. She falls on her ass, kicks her feet out on pure instinct and blind fury, and the peggie falls across from her.

He drops his gun, and they stare at each other, all wide eyes and anger, from her, and confusion, from him.

Exactly three seconds pass before she’s able to draw in a breath and launch herself forward. The peggie throws his hands up to stop her but she’s spent too much time fighting for her life for him to be able to stop her now. She gets her hands on his face and slams his head onto the pavement, then slams it again, then slams it a final time as his body goes still underneath her.

Her hands are sticky when she pulls them away, dark red and viscous, and she wipes them on the front of his sweater before she climbs to her feet.

The driveway in front of the armory is deadly silent. She can’t hear any more peggies coming, but she can’t hear Jude either. She stretches out her fingers, picks up her gun, takes another minute to look around for Jude, just in case.

When he doesn’t stand up or call out for her, she heaves a heavy sigh.

If he’s not waiting for her when she gets Staci out of here, she’s going to fucking kill him again.

\---

There aren’t as many people hanging out in Jacob’s bunker as there were in John’s. It’s easier for her to sneak into each room, quietly snap a neck or two, and then sneak back out. She doesn’t even have to use her pistol until she finds two peggies trying to put out a grease fire in the kitchen. While she kills the first peggie, the second one catches his sleeve on fire.

She puts the fire out by dumping the entire contents of an industrial-sized box of salt on his corpse before she moves on. She’s going to have to come back out of the bunker the same way, probably, and this isn’t something she wants to smell on her way out.

Staci doesn’t need to see it either.

There are more peggies on the lower level, and these seem to know she’s here. She ducks behind some crates and makes one start to laugh; he calls out a taunting, “You scared, little girl?” as he comes around to find her.

She shoots him between the eyes and doesn’t feel bad about it.

She finds the control room empty, the override key still stuck in the console. If she hadn’t probably already killed the person who left it here, they’d be in a world of trouble. As it is…

She turns it, overriding the pressure locked doors so she can get down to where Staci’s being held. She turns to leave the room when she sees Staci on a little TV in the corner, and she gets right up to it before she realizes this one isn’t a live feed.

It’s some kind of interrogation, playing on a loop. She can hear Staci’s pleading voice, Jacob’s cruel one telling Staci he’s the worst kind of person, a traitor, a Judas, and she smashes the closest TV to her with the butt of the same rifle she took from Jacob.

A twist of fate she’s remarkably proud of.

She can see Staci still sitting on other monitors, head back, eyes closed, chest moving shallowly. He’s still alive, for now, but she _has to_ get to him before anyone else does.

She has to go down another level and kill a few more peggies to find him, but she _does_ find him, tied to a chair and surrounded by monitors playing his punishment over and over and over. A pipe is leaking behind him and water’s covering the floor up to her ankles, and she’s never been so happy to see another person as long as she’s been alive.

She checks his pulse first, her blood-stained fingers pressing against the underside of his neck to make sure he’s still with her.

He startles at her touch, muscles jumping, and then gives her the most beautiful smile she’s ever seen. “Rook? Are you real?”

She rests her hands on his chest as the full force of her relief washes over her. “Yeah, honey, I’m real. Let me get you free, hang on.”

She slices through the bands of duct tape holding him to the chair, and Staci pushes himself up so fast that his legs buckle under him and he falls through Mattie’s reaching arms into the gathered water.

She tries to help him stand back up, but he pulls away and stands under his own power. He stumbles again, catches himself, turns to look at her with something like pride shining out of his eyes.

Then… the expression falls.

“He said that I was weak. That I deserved this. Maybe he was right…” Staci turns more to survey his prison, the room that was meant to be his tomb. “Maybe I deserved it.” He starts to move again, limping as his legs keep threatening to give out, probably still asleep from sitting in one position for who knows how long, grabbing for a sledgehammer leftover from who knows what. “Maybe I did. Maybe I did, may _be I did!”_

He finally lifts the sledgehammer and swings it as hard as he can, smashing through the nearby console until it starts to spark. He doesn’t look at Mattie as he turns to look for something, doesn’t look at her as he drags the sledgehammer through the water to break the latch on a lockbox.

He pulls a rifle out, holding it with hands too reverent for her comfort, and then finally he looks at her.

“They made me strong. And now, they’re weak. And the weak… must be culled.” 

He nods, confident, and Mattie has a fraction of a second to clap her hands over her ears before he raises the rifle and opens fire. She can hear him screaming over the rapid fire, and she digs her fingernails into her scalp to distract herself. A bullet ricochets off the wall and slices across her wrist.

She closes her eyes against the pain and the blood and the noise.

She doesn’t realize she’s openly crying until the noises stop and warm hands are pulling hers from her ears. She opens her eyes and has to blink to clear her vision, fat tears rolling down her cheeks as she meets Staci’s gaze. He looks… she’s not sure, exhausted and hurt and apologetic and then impatient as she takes short, gasping breaths to calm herself down.

He wipes his thumbs across her cheeks, too rough to be really comforting, then he checks where her arm is still bleeding. His touch is rough her too, pressing into the shallow wound to test it.

An alarm blares, and he meets her eyes again.

“We gotta go.”

She allows herself enough time to take another deep breath, and then she nods.

Staci’s safe.

It’s time to go.


	10. Chapter 10

Mattie drags Staci back to the Wolf’s Den with her hand buried in his filthy deputy uniform. He protests, quietly, not making any actual effort to pull away from her, and she doesn’t let go all the way through the mountains and to the hatch.

She hesitates before going inside, swaying on her feet, just waiting for a sign she’s allowed to be here. If they turn her away…

Well. She’ll deserve it, won’t she?

Tammy comes out to greet her personally, eyes red-rimmed and puffy. Staci ducks his head when he sees her, hands clasped in front of him, and Mattie doesn’t let go of his sleeve.

“We’ve seen more Militia members come home today than any other time you took one of Jacob’s bases away from him.” Tammy puts her hands on her hips and stares Mattie down, then glances over and gives Staci an evaluating look. “You two can come in, but you’ll have to spend the night in the interrogation room where we can make sure you won’t hurt anyone else. Deal?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Mattie can see Staci nodding out of the corner of her eye, but his head is still bowed. “Whatever we need to do.”

Tammy meets Mattie’s eyes for another long moment, the two women speaking without words. Finally, Tammy nods and waves her hand for them to follow her as she turns.

Mattie pulls Staci along behind her as she follows Tammy down into the Wolf’s Den, passing through Eli’s command center to get to Tammy’s interrogation room. Mattie hesitates, looking for Eli, hoping to see him behind the table watching the monitors or looking at maps of the mountain, but… he isn’t there. The room is silent, the monitors showing grainy feeds of the outposts, and there’s still a dark stain on the floor where he fell.

When she looks up again, Tammy’s staring at her with an expression too sympathetic to be real. She holds out a hand and Mattie takes it.

“I’ll bring you some food and water,” she says, squeezing Mattie’s fingers. “Maybe a first aid kit too, yeah? You can call us if you need anything.”

“Thank you, Tammy. Really.”

Tammy nods like she knows and pushes the door to the interrogation room open.

It’s empty of its usual equipment, the chair and the kiddie pool and the battery moved somewhere Mattie can’t see. Instead, there are two mattresses on the floor with blankets and a single flat pillow each. The door shuts heavily behind them and Staci flinches at the noise; when Mattie turns around he’s standing with his eyes squeezed closed, his muscles locked tight.

“Staci, hey, we’re safe here. They won’t do anything to us here.”

He takes a slow deep breath and then meets her gaze. “Are you sure?”

She gives him what she hopes is a comforting smile. “Yeah, of course. We’re just going to rest here until tomorrow and then I’ll take you to Fall’s End. Joey can’t wait to see you.”

His face lights up, life coming back to his eyes and a small smile lifting his lips. “Joey’s alive?”

“She’s alive and grumpy as ever.”

Staci doesn’t quite laugh, but his smile grows a bit. Mattie lets go of him and lets him walk deeper into the room on his own power, no longer limping, arms loose at his sides.

She draws in a shaky breath and digs her knuckles into her breastbone, pain bursting from the still-healing scar on her chest. Jesus, the second she gets somewhere alone or with Sharky, she’s going to fucking lose it. She’s just going to cry until she can’t anymore, get the stress out, figure out how to get some goddamn peace before she heads into the Henbane for Burke.

The door opens again and Wheaty sticks his head in. He looks grumpy, still closed off and upset at what she did, and she can’t blame him. He has an armful of supplies, a couple of MREs and a canteen and a first aid kit and what looks like some fresh clothes, and he thrusts them into her arms without saying a word.

He slams the door on his way out. The lock clicks behind him.

“Staci, here.”

He’s at her side in an instant, ready to help, and together they sit on the floor between the mattresses and sort through their supplies. They eat silently, side by side, then Mattie lets Staci have most of the water before using the rest to wet a cloth from the first aid kit.

She dabs at his face, wiping away layers of dirt and sweat and blood while he sits with his eyes closed, unmoving, patient. She allows herself a few silent tears while she works, mourning everything Staci went through while she struggled to save him.

“I’m sorry, Staci.” Her voice is low as she daubs antibacterial cream on a cut across his cheek, picturing how the scar will look when it finally heals.

He opens his eyes and meets hers. “Me too.”

He takes the cream from her and squeezes some onto his fingers before applying it to the still-bleeding graze on her arm. 

“We shouldn’t have let Burke make us go to the compound. We should’ve waited for the National Guard in the first place. I don’t know if they’d do a better job, but at least none of this shit would’ve happened.”

Staci nods as she speaks, taping a piece of gauze to her wound. “Sometimes I think… we didn’t survive that helicopter crash,” he says, whispering like he’s admitting a secret. “And we’re just… stuck in Purgatory to atone for our sins.”

“Yeah,” Mattie says, whispering too, thinking about all the times she’s found herself back in place, struggling to figure out what it all means, the overwhelming sense of _try again_ that’s been pushing her forward. “Yeah, sometimes I think that too.”

They finish bandaging each other in silence, pull clean clothes on over still grimy bodies, and climb onto one of the mattresses with their pillows and blankets. Mattie wraps herself around Staci and he collapses into her, each drawing comfort from the other as they struggle to find sleep.

\---

Mattie doesn’t know what time it is when she wakes up again, confused by being underground and the general lack of schedule she’s had since the crash. Staci’s stirring in her arms, murmuring something in his sleep, and from outside the door…

Someone’s playing the guitar.

Staci’s hair is greasy where she cards her fingers through it, but she keeps working it until his murmuring stops and he wakes up naturally with a soft sigh. He presses closer at first, squeezing her, then he seems to remember where he was because he sits up too fast and nearly headbutts her in the nose.

“We’re in the Wolf’s Den,” she says, speaking fast but sitting up more slowly so he won’t spook. “We’re okay.”

Staci doesn’t turn to look at her, just sits very still with his head tilted up to the side to listen to the music.

It’s not a song she recognizes, but it’s played well, the notes filtering through the door and filling the cold spaces around them like a caress. The song speeds up a bit and Staci starts to laugh, a low sound that he smothers with one hand.

“Stace?”

It takes him a minute to answer, but she can hear the smile in his voice when he says, “I know this song.”

He stands, slowly, like it hurts, stumbles a little like he had back in Jacob’s bunker, but he doesn’t fall. He makes his way to the door and tries the handle; it’s unlocked and the knob turns, the door opening as he pulls.

The music gets louder, then cuts off as Staci steps out into the command center.

Mattie scrambles to her feet and follows him, slamming her still-sore shoulder into the door jam in her haste. She clutches it, pushing her fingers into the source of the pain, and opens her mouth to call out for Staci, but she snaps her jaw shut at the last second.

Staci’s standing just a few paces away, barefoot and in ill-fitting pants, motionless as they both watch Jude prop his guitar against the wall and stand to his full height. He doesn’t even look at Mattie, a wide smile lighting up his face.

“I should have known you’d be here,” Staci says, finally, breaking the silence and making Jude choke on a laugh.

“And I should’ve known you’d sleep in until the last possible second,” Jude says, voice shaking, and that’s all it takes to get Staci walking again.

He crosses the rest of the space between them in an instant, arms up and around Jude’s neck as Jude catches him around the waist. They fall into each other’s arms, laughing wetly, swaying a bit with the force of their affection. 

Mattie stands and watches, relief at seeing Jude still alive so strong that she forgets she should give them privacy.

She doesn’t know what she would have done if Jude hadn’t been here. 

She doesn’t know what _Staci_ would have done.

Jude looks up and catches her eye, smiling at her to include her in their moment. “Thank you,” he says, voice cracking. “Thank you.”

She has to wipe her eyes at that, clear her throat so she doesn’t start crying too. She’s not sure she’ll be able to stop if she does, and they have more to do.

“You’re okay? You’re okay?” She’s not sure why she’s repeating herself, but she can’t help it. She just… she needs to make sure.

Jude nods at her, still clinging to Staci. “I wish I could’ve been there to help, but I’m glad you brought him back.”

Oh, he doesn’t remember.

That makes sense.

“I have to take him to Fall’s End. We can’t stay here.”

Jude nods and Staci pulls away to stand up straight. He doesn’t step back, though, hovering in Jude’s space as he wipes his at his face. “I’ll come with you. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Okay, I’ll just… uh, I’ll get ready.” Mattie turns to go back into the room, bumps her other arm into the door jam, then finally makes it into the room to find her shoes.

Jesus, she misses Sharky. She’s going to have to radio him to make sure he meets them in Fall’s End before she goes into the Henbane. She needs to check with Dutch about Jess too, just double-check that she’s fine after everything.

Based on everything Mattie knows, she should be.

But… it doesn’t hurt to check.

Tammy finds them before they leave, intercepting them with Wheaty at her side to ask them to take out the wolf beacons. Mattie agrees right away — really, what else can she say? — and makes a mental note to send Grace and Jess after them, and then Wheaty asks her again to look for records.

She agrees to that too.

They only have to walk a couple miles south before they find an abandoned car on the side of the road, the keys still in the ignition like they almost always are. Mattie climbs in the driver’s seat without asking, Staci sits in the back next to Jude’s guitar case, and Jude gets in next to Mattie and slides the seat back as far as it’ll go.

They keep the radio off for the entire drive.

Fall’s End is quiet, warmer than the mountains with almost cheerful yellow sun and businesses actually open to the public. The Spread Eagle’s sign is lit against the bluest blue sky she’s ever seen, and Joey lets out a loud whistle when she sees them driving up to the bar’s parking lot.

“Mary May! They’re here!”

Joey heads for them at a jog, slamming into Staci just as he’s stretching from being cramped in the backseat. They stumble back a step, Joey’s laughter joined after a moment with Staci’s.

Joey takes a step back and holds him at arm’s length to examine him.

“You look like shit, Pratt,” she announces, a fond smile on her face.

“Fuck you, Josephine,” he says, smiling right back.

She claps him on the shoulder and turns to Mattie, pulling her in a tight hug. Mattie squeezes her back hard, making up for the lost opportunity after rescuing Joey from John’s bunker, happy that she’s open to hugging again.

It’s not really a surprise when Joey whispers, “Is this the park ranger who warned us about the wolves in the spring?”

Mattie’s nodding as she pulls away. “Joey, you remember Jude Wright? Jude, this is Joey.”

They make their greetings while Staci glances between the three of them with growing apprehension — Mattie gets it; Staci hadn’t told them about Jude for a reason, and now they all know, but no one’s going to give him shit for it _now._

The sharp bark of a small dog interrupts them, and Jude swears roundly as he drops to his knees to greet Moose. The little white creature is wagging his tail so hard his body is vibrating, jumping up into Jude’s arms to cover his face in kisses. Mary May appears behind him, eyebrows high, a smile on her face as she greets Mattie with a hug too.

“Uh, you two know each other?”

Jude looks up at Mary May as he stands with Moose in his arms, cradling the dog almost the same way he had Staci.

“Jacob’s men burned my house down when they started the reaping,” Jude says, smiling and talking through enthusiastic dog kisses. “I came back and it was totally destroyed. I couldn’t find Moose anywhere so I thought… How did he end up here?”

He’s looking at Mary May when he asks the question, but it’s Mattie who answers as he stands back up to his full height. 

“I found him in John’s ranch when I kicked the peggies out of it?” She pitches her voice up at the end of her sentence like it’s a question, the actual inquiry going unspoken.

Staci looks sharply up at Jude, whose face reddens a bit.

“Oh, uh. Long story. I’m just glad he’s okay. Did you have a nice vacation, buddy?”

Moose barks like he’s answering, then rests his head on Jude’s shoulder and heaves a heavy sigh that shakes his whole body, another answer that makes Mattie smile, the reasons behind Moose being at John’s house, and Staci’s reaction to the news, rendered unimportant now.

They all have some catching up to do.

\---

Mattie makes herself at home in the same house she and Sharky stayed in last time they were in Fall’s End, a little tipsy and full of Casey’s cooking. The bedding is cold but still smells like Sharky, sweat and soap and gasoline. She buries her face in the pillow and breathes deeply, the deep ache in her chest spreading until she can’t do anything about it. She cries slowly at first, fighting it even though it makes her throat ache, then she just… lets go.

She sobs into the pillow, releasing stress and tension and loneliness, and she squeezes it tight like she would be holding Sharky if he were there with her.

She hates this. Hope County had felt so much more like home than any place she’s ever lived before, and now all she wants to do is escape it. This isn’t fair. 

This isn’t _fair._

She cries herself out until she’s exhausted, then she curls up on her side and tries to steady her breathing from little gasps for air to something steady enough for her to sleep. She just wants to go to sleep and not wake up until things are fucking normal again. Is that too much to ask?

She’s pulling this county back together piece by piece — Jacob’s gone, John’s gone, Jude is back with Staci and Joey is back living near Mary May, just the way she likes it — and what does she have to say for it? Perpetually bruised ribs, sore shoulders, muscles and scars that aren’t quite healing right, a goddamn scar on her chest that still itches as it heals? 

Her daddy’s ways told her life isn’t fair, but this is fucking ridiculous.

She’s rounding the corner from grief back to anger, working herself back up instead of easing herself to sleep, the faint scent of Sharky gone from the pillow now that she’s rubbed her tears into it, and she’s just about ready to get up and see what liquor she can find to help her when her radio buzzes from the bedside table.

Fury flares in her, bright and hot at the idea that someone’s begging for help in the middle of the night, then guilt flows in to extinguish the flames. 

They need her. They can’t do this without her.

What would she do if someone permanently died because she was too grumpy to answer their call?

She rolls over to grab the radio, rubbing her eyes with her free hand, fumbling a bit to turn up the volume. 

_“...you there, Dep?”_

Oh, holy shit. She clicks the transmit button before she’s sure he’s done talking in her excitement, calling out an urgent, “I’m here, baby. Over.”

There’s a pause before his voice crackles over the line, but it nearly makes her melt with relief. _“You somewhere I can get to ya?”_

She waits until she’s sure he’s done talking, an awkward pause filling the radio waves while she waits for him to say over. “I’m tucked in at our place in the valley. Only thing missing’s you, _over._ ”

He’s not laughing when he speaks again, but she can absolutely hear the smile in his voice when he says, _“What would you do to me if I was there too? Uh, over.”_

She _is_ laughing when she replies, “Why don’t you come over and I’ll just give you a practical demonstration? Over.”

God, she hopes no one she knows is listening to this channel. She likes the teasing and the flirting — it’s pulling her spirits right back up, just like Sharky always does — but the idea that Staci might hear and bring it up tomorrow morning? While she’s looking at him?

No thanks. Hard pass.

_“You’re the boss! See you in a few. Over’n out.”_

Mattie smiles and puts the radio back on the nightstand, half expecting one of her friends to come online next to rib her for scheduling a booty call over the open airwaves, but nothing happens. It stays silent, the house stays dark, and she draws her knees up to her chest as she sits by the headboard to wait.

Sharky doesn’t take too long to show up; he must have already been on the way into Fall’s End when he called. She hears the sound of his Jeep parking out front, hears him barging into the house like he doesn’t know how to be quiet — the door bangs against the wall then slams shut, his footsteps are loud on the kitchen floor, something falls with a thud and is followed by his full-volume curses.

She bites her lip to hide her smile. He’s excited to see her, and that warmth in her chest helps push out more of her earlier despair. All that she needs now is…

The bedroom door opens with a little more grace, Sharky sticking his head in through the crack with a wide grin. She smiles back at him, finally happy, and holds out her hand so he’ll stop staring at her and get in bed with her.

He kicks off his clothes on the way to the bed, finally sliding in behind her in just a pair of (hopefully) clean whitey tighties. She lets herself laugh at the image and lays down on her side so he can curl around her back. He holds her tight, burying his face in her hair, and just breathes her in.

“You wake up in the hotel?”

There’s a little pause, then Sharky shakes his head behind her and tightens his hold on her. She huffs out a heavy breath so he’ll relax, but he doesn’t until he says, “Boshaw Manor. I died again? In the hotel?”

“Yeah. You and Jess both.”

Sharky makes a considering noise and presses a kiss to her bare shoulder. “Guess I should start keeping track too, huh?”

She shrugs, bumping her shoulder against his face. “I’d rather you didn’t have to.”

He doesn’t answer her, just presses more kisses to the place where her shoulder meets her neck. It feels nice, so she tilts her head to the side and lets him continue as his warmth starts to lull her to sleep. She’s exhausted after everything, and now that he’s with her, it’s like her body has full permission to relax.

She’s almost completely asleep when his hand starts to wander, down down down her body until she grabs it before it can get all the way between her legs. She pulls it up to her mouth and kisses his knuckles, then replaces it where it started.

“In the morning?” It’s hard to get the words out, tired as she is, and when he doesn’t respond right away a little lance of fear runs through her. What if he’s annoyed that she turned him down after he drove all the way over here? What if he gets mad and wants to go back home?

She’s opening her mouth to apologize when Sharky just hugs her tighter, curling around her until even his feet are tucked between hers, one more kiss pressed to the back of her head.

“Yeah, sorry.” His voice almost disappears into her hair, nearly lost before they reach her ears. “Get some sleep, shorty. Love you.”

She finds his fingers with hers and tangles them together. “Love you.”

She’s asleep before he has time to move again.

\---

She wakes early, despite her best efforts, but Sharky’s still snoring behind her. He still has one arm under her pillow but he’s turned flat on his back, mouth open, face so relaxed the lines around his eyes have almost, but not quite, disappeared. She watches him sleep for a while, propped up on her elbow, as the room slowly lightens with the rising sun.

They’ll have to get going soon, head into the Henbane to track down Faith through the bliss haze, but until then…

She snuggles a little closer, puts her hand flat on his bare chest, just where the hair is thickest. His next snore catches in his throat, and she waits to see if he’s waking up, but his breathing steadies and his eyes stay closed.

She runs her fingers over his skin, trying to tease him awake, first circling one nipple until it hardens and then pinching at the other. He shifts, turns his head toward her, snores a little louder, and stays sound asleep. She smiles and pinches him again, glancing down his body as his cock starts to take notice of what his brain hasn’t figured out yet.

She runs her fingers down her stomach next, then scratches her nails back up, and that’s finally what does it. He opens his eyes as he moans aloud, whole body jerking in surprise. She laughs at the expression on his face, the confused arousal, and then laughs more when he pulls himself together and rolls them over.

He settles between her legs and she kisses him back while she holds her breath. He rubs against her with a moan, fully hard already, and she lets out a surprised cry when he hits her just right.

She pushes at him and he moves easily, falling onto his back and yanking at her shirt as soon as she straddles him. He looks so sleep-ruffled and turned on, eyes dark and cheeks pink, that she can’t help leaning down to give him another soft, lingering kiss.

He kisses her back but pulls at her hips at the same time, grinding against her in silent desperation. She obeys his unspoken request, falling into an easy rhythm before sitting up and bracing her hands on his chest.

“Mornin’, shorty.” Sharky’s voice is sleep-rough and deep, the calluses on his fingers rasping against her thighs as he slides his hands up to grab for her panties. “Guess you had a good sleep?”

She pushes up onto her knees just enough for him to pull her panties to the side, then she’s reaching down to pull his cock free of his underwear. 

“It’s always good when it’s with you,” she says, voice sweet, and his little laugh is swallowed up on a moan as she sinks down onto him. “Feel good, baby?”

“Yeah,” he gasps out as she gives her hips a slow roll, both hands back on his chest. “Five stars.”

She leans a little more weight on his chest as she giggles. She rolls her hips again and again, falling into an easy rhythm that does little more than just tease both of them. Sharky holds onto her thighs and smiles up at her, It’s almost overwhelming, being on the receiving end of that much adoration, but she can’t look away from it, just lets it ratchet her pleasure higher and higher.

Christ. What would she do without him? She never would have looked at him twice before all this, but now? 

He’s perfect.

She moves her hips faster, more sharp thrusts than slow rolls, and Sharky groans like she’s punched the air right out of his lungs. He releases his hold on her legs so she can move freely, moving his hands up to the headboard instead, gripping tightly as he tries to match her rhythm.

He keeps his eyes on her even as his flush crawls down his front, as he bites his lip and groans from deep in his chest, heels pushing into the mattress to give himself better leverage. It’s a heady feeling, seeing him like this, and she chases it with a heady laugh that makes his eyes roll back in his head.

“Mat, please, I can’t, you feel too good, please, I need to…” He’s babbling, on the edge, and that pushes her higher too. 

“You’ll wait your turn or I’ll stop,” she says, still kind of laughing, leaning forward even more to change the angle. “Can you hold on for me, baby?”

His only response is a long, drawn-out _fuck_ that sounds like it’s been dragged forcefully from his throat, and Mattie shivers all over when she hears it.

“Yeah, Sharky, _fuck_!”

She comes hard, just like that, with Sharky under her and still moving inside her until he grips her hips and refuses to let her move another inch. She comes laughing, head tossed back, her fingernails digging into Sharky’s skin to leave little half-moon imprints behind.

It’s beautiful and glorious and she collapses onto his chest the moment her muscles start to relax. His arms wrap around her like he’s just been waiting for her to be close enough, one hand in her hair while the other presses on her lower back, keeping her flush against him while he makes aborted little motions with his hips, like he desperately wants to fuck into her but is afraid it isn't his turn.

She catches her breath quick as she can, pushes herself up with her hands flat on the mattress on either side of Sharky’s head, and smiles at him as she brushes her nose across his.

“Doin’ okay, Shark?”

He doesn't quite open his eyes to look at her, his expression pinched in an expression caught as he is between discomfort and euphoria.

“Please?” His voice is barely a whisper, barely loud enough for her to hear. She has enough time to realize it's the quietest she's ever heard him speak before he adds, “I’ve been _good.”_

She shivers all over again, accidentally clenches around him, and then she begins crawling her way down his body, down toward the foot of the bed.

He lets her go, covering his face with both hands when he realizes what she's doing, groaning into them as she finally slips his underwear down his legs and drops it on the floor.

She takes his cock in her hand, stroking it with a loose grip, then tightens her fingers a bit around the base when he pushes hard up toward her.

“You have been good, baby,” she says, mostly just to get his attention, then when he makes eye contact with her, she adds, “You can come now,” before she leans down and takes the tip of his cock into her mouth.

It only takes a minute of licking and stroking until he starts to beg again, calling her name and shaking all over, legs shifting restlessly on the bed but hips strangely still as though he's afraid she’ll change her mind if he thrusts too hard into her mouth.

He doesn't warn her before he comes, but she’s ready for it, eyes on his face and ears burning as he calls her name together with all manner of praise that devolves into heartfelt groans as he spills across her tongue.

She swallows because it's faster, crawls up the bed and collapses next to him, curling against his side. He pulls her even closer, still gasping for breath, and she kisses his chest because it's closest to her mouth.

“Holy _shit_ , Mat.” 

She giggles and presses her face against his side. “You liked that? Wasn't too much?”

He huffs out a breathless laugh. “Fuck, Dep, you can do whatever you want to me and I’ll die a happy man. Guess I always did like a hot chick bossing me around.”

She rolls her eyes and laughs again, kissing him once more, then just relaxes into his embrace.

They've _earned_ this. Everything else can wait.

\---

Just like last time they were in Fall’s End, they don’t manage to drag themselves out of bed until after noon, emerging sated and sleepy and starving to see what Casey’s able to cook up at the Spread Eagle. Joey’s already there, leaning against the bar with her chin in her hand and a beatific smile on her face as she talks to Mary May, an expression that shutters and then shifts into an amused smirk as soon as she spots Sharky and Mattie’s entwined fingers.

Staci and Jude show up when Mattie’s halfway through eating Casey’s burger, grease smeared across her face because she can’t peel herself away from it long enough to remember her table manners. She’s half in Sharky’s lap in one of the booths, Joey across from them, and Mattie’s first to see Staci walking in the door with Jude trailing behind him, ducking just a bit when he passes under the door frame.

They don’t look much different than Mattie and Sharky, tired but happy, if a little more reserved. They bump their shoulders together as they lean against the bar to talk to Mary May, then leave an appropriate amount of space between them as they order food.

Mattie returns her attention back to her burger to distract herself from the sudden knot in her chest. This is almost like it was before, how it _should have been_ before, the three deputies and their partners hanging out together at a bar on the weekends, having fun without the threat of the cult hanging over their head.

What would their lives be like without the Seeds here to fuck everything up?

Maybe next time she dies, the _black white black_ will dump her out in an alternate universe where the only problems Hope County has are the usual drug use and domestics.

“How long are you going to stay this time?” Joey’s beer is empty but she’s still playing with the bottle. The bruises from her time in John’s bunker have faded, the light mostly back in her eyes, and she smiles almost as easily as she did before. “You look like you could use a week of solid sleep.”

Mattie snorts and rolls her eyes as she finishes chewing and then swallows. “I’d like to get to the jail before nightfall. I don’t want to be moving around the Henbane after dark.”

“It’s hard enough to tell your ass from your elbow even when it’s bright as hell,” Sharky supplies, earning himself an amused look from Joey. “I wouldn’t want to run into Faith in the dark. You know, one time, I saw her at a gas station and I just gave her twenty dollars? No reason, just wanted her to have it.” He pops a fry in his mouth to punctuate his sentence, and Joey turns her amused look to Mattie.

“So we’ll probably head that way after lunch. Y’all gonna join me this time?”

Jude’s wide-eyed, panicked look is enough of an answer for her, even before he looks silently at Staci for confirmation. Staci somehow looks worse today than he did before they made it into town; the grime and dirt is gone, but the shadows and bruises look deeper. He doesn’t even look like himself in scavenged clothes, even if they seem to fit. The only thing familiar about him is the wooden beads on his wrist.

“That’s… probably not a good idea,” Joey says, forehead wrinkling as she takes in Staci’s state. “We’re not really used to it like you are.”

Mattie suppresses an eye roll. She knows what Joey’s doing. It’s just so close to _only you can help us even though we’re perfectly capable_ that she’s annoyed by it, but that’s not Joey’s fault, and she’s not leaving for the Henbane after fighting with any of her friends.

Staci draws in a deep breath and for a moment Mattie’s afraid he’s going to launch into a diatribe about being weak, and based on Jude’s wince, he thinks that’s what’s coming too. Instead, Staci just heaves a heavy sigh and rests his elbows on the table.

“We’re going to stay here and help with rebuilding,” Staci says instead, and he sounds exhausted down to his bones. “We should shore up defenses here in case Joseph decides on a more direct attack. Anything that happens in Faith’s region needs to be smaller, directed at the bliss production. If you can stop that, you can stop her.”

“Do you know where we should start?” Mattie licks her fingers clean, and Sharky stares at her while she does. Her cheeks heat, but she ignores it even though Joey makes a disgusted sort of noise.

“The Water Treatment Plant,” Staci says, no hesitation. “The Jessop Conservatory, too. That’s where it started. The distribution system. Any of the plants — anything you can do, really.”

Mattie wipes her hand on her napkin, finally, and reaches across to squeeze Staci’s hand. He lets her, turning his wrist so their palms are touching.

“Thank you, Stace. We’ll come back as soon as we kill the bitch.”

Slowly, Staci smiles. It’s the cheeriest she’s seen him when he’s not touching Jude, and the coldness in his eyes is chilling. Mattie tightens her hold on his fingers as he whispers, “Good.”

Silence falls on the table.

It’s time to go.


	11. Chapter 11

Whitehorse takes one look at Sharky and Mattie holding hands and turns right around and walks back into the jail. Sharky doesn't say anything for once, but Mattie can see his shoulders slump a little. Really, Whitehorse is the closest thing she has to a dad since her _real_ daddy kicked her out of the house with her belongings all in black trash bags. It's not that they'd talked about Whitehorse’s approval or anything, and Mattie certainly wasn't expecting it, but… apparently, Sharky was hoping for it after all.

Mattie squeezes his fingers and leaves him talking about his flamethrower to the woman running the armory, something about a part he needs, and makes a beeline for Whitehorse’s office.

She doesn’t have to try forcing him to tell her what his reaction is; before his office door is totally shut behind her, he’s already struggling to keep his voice down.

“Rook, I have never once questioned your judgement, but just what in the _hell_ are you doing with the Boshaw boy?”

Mattie blinks and him and he stares back, his mustache actually quivering, and she covers her mouth to stop herself from laughing. How has he ever interrogated anyone with that happening every time he gets upset? 

She pulls herself back together, drawing in a deep breath and pressing her fingers against her cheek instead. “I know. It wasn’t exactly planned.”

“You know there’s still technically a warrant out for his arrest.”

“I’m not gonna arrest him, Earl.” She’s never used Whitehorse’s first name before, and the sound of it makes him deflate as the anger whooshes out of him. “He keeps me safe out there, and he’s good at fighting, and there’s a distinct _lack_ of volunteers in that department.”

He crosses his arms across his chest. “Be careful with him, at least.”

Mattie smiles a little, letting the warmth of his paternal concern settle in her bones. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

He makes a little grumbling noise, like he disagrees, but he lets the subject drop. “Good job with Jacob,” he says instead. “Just one more to go.”

Her smile is a little more forced, not because she doesn’t feel proud of what she’s accomplished, but because she’s exhausted from the weight of the county. She doesn’t know how many lives she’s taken, only how many lives she’s sacrificed for people who don’t even understand.

“Staci’s with Joey in Fall’s End,” she says instead of anything she’s thinking. “He told us where to start bringing down Faith’s operations. Is Virgil around?”

Whitehorse nods and steers her back out of his office and toward where Virgil’s set up in the other room. Together, they look over the beaten up map Mattie’s been carrying around, marking places they know need to be cleaned out — like the Water Treatment Plant and the Conservatory — and Virgil and Whitehorse make some guesses about other places she should go look — like the old summer camp that closed down before Mattie moved to the county. 

It’s dark by the time they’re done, dinner already served, and Mattie finds Sharky waiting for her on one of two cots he’s tucked together in the bullpen. He has some bottles of water, two beers, and two MREs, and his fingernails have been bitten down to the quick.

She greets him with a soft _hey babe_ and a kiss, leaning on his shoulders for balance as she kicks off her shoes at the same time, and then she collapses across his lap instead of on her cot to eat her dinner. 

“You’re a peach,” she says, mouth full, and tries not to laugh when Sharky turns pink at the compliment. “We’ll spend the night here then head north. Have you talked to your aunt lately? If she still needs us to track down her helicopter, we might be able to make a stop. Sure would be useful.”

Sharky shrugs and shakes his head and shifts her legs in his lap so he can get his hands on her feet. He grabs one and digs his thumb into the muscle, and she groans around a mouthful of water.

“Ugh. You’re the best.”

Sharky snorts and shakes his head again, then finally works up the courage to say whatever he’s been thinking about since she ran off earlier.

“Did, uh, did the sheriff say anything about me?” He’s trying to whisper, but he’s still loud enough that Tracey glances over at them from where she’s trying to read on one of the other cots, an amused little smile on her face. Mattie ignores her.

“Nothing important,” Mattie says, finally. “We’re not going to arrest you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I wouldn’t let him.”

Sharky nods, and his shoulders relax a bit. He rubs her foot a little harder, and she bites off another moan. There’s no reason to be obscene about this, even if she kinda wants to be. More than anything, she wants him to massage her other foot and then let her fall asleep.

When Sharky _stays_ silent, stays trapped in his thoughts instead of finding something to occupy their thoughts, she forces herself to sit up and reach for his face. She holds his chin and guides his face to hers. 

“I told him you take care of me, that you care about me. That’s enough.”

Sharky stares at her for another second and then his face breaks out into a wide smile. She pulls him forward the last few inches and gives him a soft, slow kiss that tastes like beer and dehydrated food, then she collapses back onto the cot and pushes her other foot into his hand.

“This one too.”

He obeys, staying silent for the last of his patience, which is about five more seconds, then he says, “It’s really kinda bullshit when you think about it, I mean, I didn’t _mean_ to set that fire, you know, and I don’t think there’s really any proof that I did it or anything, so I think that warrant should get thrown out. I need a better lawyer than that shitbag the state sends in, and—”

Mattie throws her arm over her eyes and gives into her laughter even though she’s pretty sure he’s actually being serious. He trails off and chuckles too, but his hands don’t waver.

“Tell you what,” she says, catching her breath and peering up at him. “After this is over, I’ll call in a favor and get it thrown out. They’ll owe me. Sound good?”

‘’Hell yeah, shorty. Guess I gotta keep you safe until then, huh.”

She sighs out another laugh. “Yeah, guess you’re stuck with me.”

His grin grows. “I think I can live with that.”

\---

They spend ten minutes on the hill over the water treatment plant watching the workers. Most of them are just standing around, acting as guards, but some of them are actively pouring bliss into the reservoirs. 

Sharky sits quietly while he waits, finally used to her method, and she’s just about able to ignore the sound of him picking at his nails. He even sits quietly as she sets up her sniper rifle to take down a few of the perimeter guards before they start to move in. She waits until she’s certain she’s done as much as she can, until Sharky’s pent-up energy has made him start to vibrate next to her, and then she nods at him.

“Try not to die,” she says, voice cheerful. 

“You too!” 

She can barely hear his reply as he skids down the hill, but she lets herself smile and moves more quietly down the other side. She’s not Grace; she’s not a good enough sniper to hit fast-moving targets, so she switches to her 1911 and sneaks in the back to quietly pick off some more peggies.

This plan has helped them take outpost after outpost across the Valley and through the Whitetails, but here in the Henbane? At _this_ outpost? The scent of bliss hits her heavy and hard, white lights dancing in her vision so that she completely misses the next peggie she tries to shoot and ends up having to wrestle with him until she’s able to smash his head against the side of the closest building.

The scents, the blood and the bliss, remind her so viscerally of Jacob’s compound in the mountains that she gags, dry heaving a few times over the peggie’s dead body before she’s able to push herself back to her feet.

Her skin crawls and cold sweat breaks out on her skin, but she pushes forward swallowing down saliva and fear as she puts down the rest of Faith’s men.

Someone else sneaks up behind her, surprising her, and she spins around and raises her gun at the same time. He grabs her gun hand at the wrist and twists, a surprised shout leaving him. Her gun falls to the concrete as pain radiates up her arm, and she howls in pain and rage as she tries to punch him in the face with her left hand.

“Fuck you! You’re not taking me back!” He’s yelling too, nonsense words that overwhelm her screams, and now he’s got both her wrists in his hands so she stomps on his foot. “Let me _go!”_

The bliss is making it hard to breathe, and she draws in gasping breaths that rasp through her dry throat. 

She won’t go back to Jacob’s compound.

She _won’t._

“Shit, Dep, it’s me! Stop it!”

She ignores whatever he’s saying and lands another solid stomp on his foot. He swears roundly, spinning her around and wrapping his arms around her, pinning her body against his, then he _lifts_ so she can’t do anything but kick her feet and hope she makes solid connection.

She doesn’t.

“Mat, please, it’s me, it’s me.” He dodges her headbutt and presses his cheek against hers instead. “It’s just the bliss, I promise, come back.” 

She’s close enough now that she can smell his sweat, the stench of gasoline wafting off him in waves. She shudders again, shifting in his arms, and then she goes limp.

“There you are, you’re okay, I promise. I got you.”

Sharky lowers her to the ground, letting her support her own weight but not really letting her go until she starts to turn around. He lets her bury her face in the collar of his hoodie then squeezes her tighter again as he presses her face into her hair.

She’s shaking, sick, sweat still standing out on her skin, and she drags in deep breaths of his scent. He stinks a little, and she probably does too, but it’s _familiar_ and not bliss or blood and after enough long inhales she’s able to pull her shit back together from where it was splintering apart at the seams.

“You okay?”

Sharky’s voice comes as soon as she relaxes her hold on him, but he doesn't move to pull away until she does. 

She puts just enough space between them to look up at his face, at the lines of worry, and then she nods.

“Sorry.”

He shrugs, a little half-smile gracing his features before disappearing again. “The bliss get to ya?”

She nods and tugs one arm free so she can wipe at her face.

“Forgot where I was,” she admits, fingers pressed against her eyelids so she has an excuse not to look at him. “It was just like I was in Jacob’s compound again.”

They’re still touching, so she can feel it when he goes very still. He starts moving again after a second, pulling her back against his chest with her arm squashed between them. He squeezes her too tight, presses kiss to the top of her head, mutters, “That’s never fucking happening again.”

The bliss still sparkles at the edge of her vision, but with her face pressed against his chest it’s easy to explain it away as simple pressure against her eyes.

“Yeah, ‘cause I killed him,” she says, and Sharky rumbles a laugh that she feels instead of hears, and she smiles against him as ridiculous, smug pride starts to fill her. 

“That’s my girl,” Sharky says, and she’s glad she’s already pressed against him because her face fills with heat and she just knows she’s blushing. She can feel it on her ears, too, the skin too hot all of a sudden. It’s a ridiculous reaction, but she really can’t help it. “Knew you could do it.”

She grumbles a little, more out of habit against the compliment than anything else, then she takes one last deep breath of Sharky’s scent before she forces herself to pull away and stand up on her own power for real.

The white lights are still there, wooziness overwhelming her for a second before she clenches her jaw and pushes through.

“Help me look through their pockets, see if we can find a keycard for these doors. We can destroy the pumps from inside.”

Sharky wrinkles his nose at her. “Dead bodies get diseases _so fast_ though.”

She blinks at him.

He blinks right back.

“Sharky, that is _not_ how it works.” She’s still on edge, voice coming out a little more sharp than she intended, and his shoulders hunch at the sound of it. She grimaces, already feeling bad, and tries again. “Sorry. It’s okay; I promise you won’t catch anything this fast. Just help me?”

“Sure thing, shorty,” he says, and he smiles at her even though his voice is a little quieter than it was a minute ago. She takes an extra second to pull him down by the collar of his hoodie for a quick kiss, really just a brush of her lips across his in an apology, then she pulls away and points where she wants him to go.

She can see him hesitate before he leans down to check the first corpse, and she doesn’t quite know what his problem is. The bodies are still warm, still bleeding — maybe she’s just been deadened to it over the years, but they don’t even smell. There shouldn’t be a problem here, not really, and she kneels down to rifle through the closest peggie’s coat without worrying about it.

“Check the pockets, avoid the feces and the genitals,” Sharky says, mostly to himself, and Mattie presses her lips together to avoid laughing at him.

Well… that makes a little more sense. Kinda.

It takes a few minutes, but they find a keycard attached to one of the peggie’s shirts with one of those retractable lanyard things. Sharky passes it to Mattie, along with a crisp ten dollar bill and a few crumpled ones, and she quietly squeezes his hand in thanks.

He helps her rig the bliss tanks to explode too, his skill with explosives better than hers on a good day, much less when she’s swimming in bliss fumes, exhausted, trying her best to ignore Faith’s voice in her ear telling her she’s making a mistake. 

She’s not. She knows she’s not.

They radio back to the jail when they’re done, say their first stop has been taken care of but they need to recoup a bit, and Mattie tunes out Virgil’s words of praise as she and Sharky drive out of the heavy fog of bliss.

It’s still daylight, but they stop at an abandoned cabin on top of a hill, far above where the bliss clouds usually travel. The fight at the treatment plant has left her exhausted and sore, her head aching and her sinuses burning. Sharky finds some expired Benadryl in one of the ransacked cupboards and passes it to her, watching as she washes two down with an entire bottle of water.

“This fuckin’ sucks,” she informs him, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “I wish we could set this whole place on fire.”

“Just say the word!” Sharky says, with too much enthusiasm, and Mattie smiles back at him.

“I love you,” she says, instead of addressing his offer.

He blushes.

“Hell, I love you too.”

She nods, content with that answer, then turns with the intention of passing out on the cabin’s single bed. “Don’t burn anything down until I wake up, please. I’d like to help.”

She can hear him laughing as she flops down on the mattress without pulling back the blanket, then she falls deep into blessedly dreamless sleep.

\---

She wakes up slowly, confused, to voices filtering in through the closed bedroom door. She aches all over, but that’s normal, muscles overworked and body pushed to its limits as she’s done things she’s never even had nightmares about before all of this.

She lets herself drift in the space between waking and sleeping for a while longer, not in any particular hurry to force herself back to reality, and then she takes a deep breath and pushes herself up onto her elbows and knees, then sits up on her heels and stares at the wall directly in front of her. 

Now that she's more conscious, she recognizes the voices as belonging to Sharky and Hurk, and she starts to head out to the cabin’s main room when she realizes they're talking about her.

“She's pushing herself too hard, cuz.” That's Hurk, sounding worried and world-wise. “She can't keep goin’ like she's been goin’, or she’ll crash and burn. The bliss is still hitting her hard?”

Sharky sounds miserable when he responds: “I think she's allergic to it or somethin’, man. You shoulda seen her at the water plant. She nearly shot me.”

Mattie bites her lower lip and presses her ear to the crack of the door so she can hear better. She'd been so wrapped up in the bliss and her own feelings she hadn't stopped to think about how _she_ would feel if Sharky got bliss-confused and tried to shoot her. She hadn't stopped to think about how Sharky _felt._

“She’s been doing too much,” Hurk says, with the air of someone who’s seen it. “I don't know why the other deputies won't help her. It's a _gotdamn_ miracle she's even still alive.”

Someone, she thinks probably Sharky, heaves a sigh and she holds her breath to see how he's going to handle that one, but she relaxes when she hears him say, “I honestly don't fuckin’ know either.”

Well he's not wrong about that.

She puts her hand on the knob but freezes again when she hears Hurk ask, “You two fuckin’ or what?”

She flinches, but Sharky just laughs.

“C’mon, man,” he starts, but Hurk cuts him off.

“You can't lie to me,” Hurk says, voice surprisingly stern. “I raised you--”

“You did not--”

“--and I know you've been in love with her since she helped us kill the angels at the Moonflower, so I need to know if she loves you back or what.”

Mattie smiles behind the door and waits for Sharky’s answer.

“Yeah, I love her,” Sharky admits, voice a little softer. She presses her ear harder against the door to listen.

“I know that, dumbass,” Hurk says. “I’m tryna figure out if she loves you back or if she’s taking advantage of you following her around.”

Silence follows Hurk’s admission, and Mattie doesn’t know what to make of it. Has that happened to Sharky before? Someone taking advantage of how he loves someone with his whole being? Just the thought of it makes her fucking furious.

“Don’t be a dickhole,” Sharky snaps back, finally. “She ain’t like that. She loves me. She’s _good._ ”

Hurk grumbles something she can’t quite catch, then adds, “I just worry about you. You’re my baby cousin.”

“Aww. I love you, man.”

Mattie’s still smiling when she tiptoes back to the bed and then pointedly makes noise, heavy footfalls and a hand against the wall to announce she’s moving around. She pushes down the guilt she feels at eavesdropping on their conversation; it was obviously private, but it was _good_ to hear Sharky’s unfiltered thoughts about them, and about her. 

Hurk is pouring coffee into three matching mugs as she pushes the bedroom door open, and he gives her a wide, open smile as soon as he sees her.

“Hey, Hurk.”

“Morning, deputy.” Hurk smiles at her, face open and cheerful, and then he lifts his eyebrows at her and she’s suddenly sure he _knows_ she was eavesdropping. She lifts her eyebrows right back, accepting his challenge.

He wants to protect Sharky, but he doesn’t have to from her.

He nods and hands her one of the mugs. He trusts her to take care of his baby cousin, and she’ll do her best to keep him safe.

It’s the first time she’s been on this end of a shovel talk, but she’s happy he believes her.

She takes a long sip of her too-hot coffee on her way around to where Sharky is sitting at a stool pushed up against the kitchen counter. His expression clears when she looks at him, lightening into another smile, and then she wraps one arm around his shoulders and gives him a lingering kiss on the forehead. His arms encircle her waist and pull her closer until she’s half sitting on him, and then he rests his head against her shoulder and clings to her like she’s a stuffed animal.

It’s comforting, and warm, and kind, and she leans into him as she sips her coffee. It’s strong and bitter, but it’s waking her up and chasing away the last of the lingering wooziness caused by the bliss.

The bruise on her wrist is obvious when she reaches out to put the mug on the counter, four clear fingerprints on the back and a thumbprint on the underside. The whole joint is sore, and she flinches when Sharky grabs for it again even though she doesn’t really mean to.

“Shit, shorty,” he says, voice as quiet as it ever gets. He pls her arm closer and runs his thumb over the marks he left in her skin. “I’m sorry.”

She pulls her hand free and uses it to grasp his chin, turning completely in his grasp so she can look him right in the eye. His face is shadowed, guilt shining from those beautiful blue eyes, and she shakes him a little before he says, “If I try to shoot you in the bliss again, you can break it off.”

“I wouldn't,” Sharky says, the protest loud and immediate and so, so honest she could cry.

“You have to,” Mattie insists, lowering her voice a little to add, “I can’t trust myself out there, but I can trust you. You did the right thing.”

Sharky looks over at Hurk before he makes a dissatisfied noise and grumbles out a “Fine.”

She rewards him with a kiss, and Hurk makes a loud _aww_ noise behind them, and when Mattie turns back around Sharky’s already giving him the finger.

Oh, children.

“You boys ready to go? We have outposts to take and angels to kill before Faith tries to kidnap me like her brothers.”

Sharky tucks himself back around her, holding her close, and so it’s Hurk who answers with a smile and a shrug and the same relentless optimism that endeared him to her way back when she answered his SOS at his father’s house.

“You just say the word and we’ll be right there with you! Faith won’t know what hit her.”

She pulls her unbruised arm free of Sharky’s grasp and picks her coffee back up. She downs it too fast, ignores the way it burns her tongue and her chest, then puts the empty mug back on the counter. “Let’s go, then. C’mon.”

\---

The first outpost they come across is in the remains of the hotel, the same one Mattie stayed in the night before her interview at the jail. It shut down not long after, and she never really knew why… but now, watching the peggies crawling all over it, she figures it out.

The cult ruined this business too.

It’s harder to control the chaos that seems to fill Sharky’s entire being when Hurk is also there. Their energy bounces off each other, increasing as they laugh and joke and tell Mattie stories from growing up no matter how many times she tries to tell them to keep it down. Even Boomer, brought along by Hurk, seems to pick up on the chaos and keeps running off into the thick underbrush on the sides of the road.

She doesn’t think twice when she sees the peggie standing in the woods behind the hotel; she’s so used to seeing Hope County residents kneeling in front of cultists that she just starts to move in their direction, abandoning Sharky and Hurk where she’d been trying to do recon on the hotel.

It doesn’t occur to her to wonder why this scene is taking place a hundred feet from the road, on the side of a hill, uncomfortably close to some bushes. It doesn’t occur to her that she’s never seen this happen anywhere but in a place where it’s easy to pull a hit and run on the peggie…

She just sees someone who needs her help, and she goes.

The peggie disappears when she shoots him, and when she trips in surprise and stumbles into the civilian…

Faith is there instead.

She smiles, beautiful, and takes Mattie’s hands in hers.

“Welcome to the bliss,” she says, and blows the dust in Mattie’s face. “I’m so glad you came.”

Mattie blinks and she’s somewhere new, somewhere beautiful, the scent of the bliss surrounding her but not making her gag. She’s laying in some grass, soft and cool as any she’s ever been in, and she’s staring up at a cloudless blue sky.

This is _nice._ This is _lovely._ What was she even worried about again?

She stays just like that, smiling, drifting closer and closer to sleep, until she hears Faith’s voice in her ear.

“You’ve been invited into our home… into our heart. Trust in the path and you’ll find the answers you seek.”

This sounds sort of familiar, the path. It’s something she’s heard about before, something she’s been avoiding for some reason. It doesn’t seem so bad from where she’s sitting — what’s so scary about a regular path?

She pushes herself up, marveling for a second that she doesn’t feel any pain — she feels good! — before realizing that’s normal. She never has pain standing up; she’s not quite that old yet. Joey keeps saying it’s going to happen soon; Joey’s back hurts if she fills out too much paperwork, but Mattie kind of things that’s just Joey trying to get out of doing what she thinks is boring.

She looks around once she’s on her feet, taking in the scenery. She’s on a path, obviously, one lined with trees on either side and covered in soft grass and little white flowers. It’s a little foggy now that she’s standing up, and she doesn’t know why she didn’t notice that before.

There’s a little bunny with antlers nestled in the grass next to her. Its nose twitches like it’s smelling her, but it doesn’t hop away.

She moves forward, toward the tree, toward Faith’s voice as she says, “This way, silly!”

There’s a moose off to the side, fully grown and huge, but it just watches as Mattie walks past. She’s not afraid; it’s not threatening.

This is lovely.

This is perfect.

Everything goes white when she reaches the tree, and Mattie blinks to clear her vision.

Is this… what usually happens?

Where is she?

“Even those who fight against us seek Salvation,” Faith says, but Mattie can’t see her through the whiteness. There’s another voice under Faith’s, a man’s voice, but Mattie can’t make out what he’s saying at first. “You’re proof of that.”

Faith is there, holding Mattie’s hands again, and Mattie lets her even though she wants to tell Faith that she’s _wrong._ Mattie doesn’t need Salvation — she found it when she was a teenager and she left it when she left home, left her chance to go to heaven in the garbage along with her daddy’s opinion of her.

“We all need guidance in times like these,” Faith says, because she can’t hear what Mattie’s thinking, pulling her along through the grass to where Joseph is giving a lesson to a group of men. 

Joseph is shirtless, and standing where everyone is sitting, and Mattie knows this should make her feel something, but… she can’t remember what.

“We must be strong,” Joseph says. “We must be vigilant.”

Faith keeps pulling her, closer and closer. “You’ll see! Now you’ll truly understand.”

“Because those on the outside,” Joseph continues, looking right at Mattie this time, “will see what we have built here together, in our New Eden, the love, and they will come.” He’s walking towards her now, and she wants to pull away but she doesn’t know how, and then she doesn’t know why she wants to. He wouldn’t hurt her. “And they will try to take from us all that we have built.”

Joseph stops in front of her, peering at her through those yellow-tinted sunglasses, and takes her elbows in his hands. “You judge me, you judge us, the things that we’ve done…”

What has he done that she should be judging him for? She tilts her head to the side and opens her mouth to speak, but no sound comes out.

“They say… that I am crazy. But when you wake up in the morning, and you look at the same news that I do… do your eyes not fill with horror? This is the world?”

He uses his grip on her elbow to turn her, and where she thought she would see more of that same field, she sees…

A mushroom cloud.

No.

“This? _This_ is the world we built for our children?” He’s yelling now, arms outstretched as the cloud grows bigger and bigger, threatening to eat the sky. Mattie’s knees lock, refusing to let her collapse to the ground or to run away. Why is he standing there? Why can’t they get to a bunker? “Communities being torn apart? Walls being erected? Because leaders are too impotent to act, bullies are too addled to lead righteously.”

The cloud is growing and growing, turning black. Ash chokes out the sun, fills the air, sticks to her tongue and claws its way down her throat and into her lungs. She coughs, gags, spits, but can’t move to defend herself, even to raise her hands to protect her eyes.

Joseph reaches his hands out to her and she’s there, in front of him, leaning into his touch as he grips her arms. He leans in close like he’s telling her a secret, and she blinks at him as the air around them turns a sickly, radiation green.

“I did not ask for this,” he confides, voice low and deep. “I was chosen.”

He pulls her closer, and she lets him, leaning into his space until their foreheads are touching, just like she’s seen him do with his brothers.

She closes her eyes against the swirling ash, draws in a shaky breath, and doesn’t move again until he stands up straight once more.

“See? Everything is coming to an end.” She opens her eyes and looks around and he’s right, oh holy shit, he’s right. Fall’s End is on fire, destroyed by the bombs. She can feel the heat on her skin, singeing her, the flames roaring closer and closer and closer.

“You can feel that. I know you can.” He releases her, steps away, moves closer to a burning car. She lists forward, feet pinned to the ground, trying to get closer to the safety of his touch. “See, mankind is weak… and vulnerable. And we are hurtling towards our destruction and no one is willing to do anything about it. I can _see_ that. _You_ can see. And we are _not_ crazy.”

She nods at him. She can do that much.

“So what are we supposed to do?” He spreads his hands, and the cross on the end of his rosary sways and catches the orange light of the flames. “We just sit back and await the inevitable?”

He’s not looking at her, but she answers anyway.

“No, Father.”

“I don’t claim to be a perfect man,” he says, the only acknowledgment that he heard her in his slow steps that draw him closer, “but I saw what was coming and I chose to act. To lead. Because society is broken, and the only way forward… is to go back to the way things once were.”

He touches her face, the beads wrapped around his hand cold against her cheek. “Innocent and pure. So safe and protected in our Garden.” He smiles, “I can save you.”

She nods at him and he smiles wider, pulling away and kneeling to pluck a blossom from a bliss plant growing at her feet. He hands it to her, and she takes it, and their fingers brush together.

“But you have to have… Faith.”

She hasn’t had faith in a long, long time, but… maybe she can believe again.

It would be foolish not to.

Right?

_Right?_

The world around her goes white again, just like before, and she can hear someone yelling her name.

No.

Not her name.

“Rook! Rook!”

Pain lances through her, every one of her nerves on fire, and she opens her mouth to scream but no sound comes out. She arches, brain and body rebelling, and she twists out of her control. Her body seizes, fighting whatever’s happening to her, and she screams and screams and screams and…

“Open your eyes!”

She does, white spots that have nothing to do with the bliss and everything to do with synaptic feedback dancing in front of her. She can just make out Whitehorse kneeling above her, hands on her shoulders, pushing her down into a cot, and she twists even harder to get away from him.

He’s hurting her.

He’s _hurting her._

“C’mon give her the adrenaline,” he says, to someone else, and she can see Tracey next to him with a needle, and she raises the needle up high with both hands and swings it down and

Mattie catches it, something like adrenaline already coursing through her, and her mouth is still open and she’s still trying to scream and

“Stop fighting, goddamn it!”

Whitehorse is still hurting her and Tracey wants to stab her and what the fuck what the fuck 

what the

fuck

_fuck_

Pain slices her in two as the needle pierces her heart and everything goes black.


	12. Chapter 12

She wakes up slowly, each breath leaving her with a rattling noise, a sharp pain over her heart almost drowning out the ache in her shoulders and ribs. She doesn’t try to open her eyes. She can already tell that will hurt too. She just tries to regulate her breathing, counting slowly, inhale, exhale.

_ One, two, three. _

_ One, two, three. _

She knows she's in the jail because of the smell, the distinctive scent of coffee and old linoleum penetrating even her cloudy sinuses. The sounds of people trying to live their regular lives around her, quiet but not quiet enough, make it too hard to go back to sleep even though she feels like she’s been run over by a car.

Maybe this is the end of it, finally.

Finally.

She makes herself open her eyes. The light stings, makes her want to close her eyes again, but she won’t let herself.

She’s not going to wallow.

She’s not going to fall into that trap.

She moves her legs first, pulling her knees up to her chest one at a time before twisting so she can let her feet fall to the floor. She heaves in several deep breaths, working up the courage and the strength to push herself up, and then she does. Her feet are on the floor, her hands white-knuckling the edge of her cot, her eyes closed again because her head is swimming.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa…” 

Sharky’s voice calms the tight ball of anxiety in her chest before he’s even in her space, but then he’s kneeling in front of her and cupping her chin in his big hands. She leans into his touch, smiling a little at his warmth.

“You okay?”

She thinks about it. “Mmm. Nope.”

She forces her eyes open so she can look at him, smiling a little just from being close to him. It takes her a second, but when her eyes focus she can see how fucking exhausted he looks. It’s like he hasn’t slept all night, or for like two days in a row — the shadows under his eyes are deeper than she’s ever seen them, the lines around his mouth more pronounced.

“You look like shit, babe.”

His frown deepens. “You scared the fuck outta me.” His voice is uncharacteristically quiet, serious, and she feels guilt creeping over her. “You wandered off and then you just dropped and wouldn’t wake up no matter what me’n Hurk did.” 

His lower lip trembles and she surges forward without thinking, wrapping weak arms around his neck and pulling herself into his lap. He tumbles back, sitting down hard, but he wraps his arms around her waist and holds her as tight as he can. He buries his face in the crook of her neck and keeps talking but now she can’t make out the words he’s saying.

She just holds him, cups the back of his head with her fingers tangled in his hair, and squeezes her eyes closed against the tears that are threatening to fall. The fact that they’re sitting on the floor in the middle of the jail doesn’t even matter to her — she’s just happy she’s not in Faith’s clutches anymore.

Sharky turns his head a little so that his face is still mostly against her but his mouth is free. “I’ve never seen you die and remembered it later.”

She gasps, pain searing through her heart. “I didn’t die, baby.”

“Thought you did.”

His admission is a quiet mumble, honesty pouring out of him because it would never occur to him to lie about something like this. She squeezes him tighter, her tears finally escaping her control and dripping into his unruly hair. It’s more than she can take, this knowledge that he thought he lost her for good, that her luck (good or bad) had finally run out and left her to die for real. 

He thought she left him.

He thought he was alone again.

She sucks in a deep breath, steels her emotions, forcibly stops her tears even though it makes her throat ache. “I wouldn’t do that to you,” she hisses, a promise she means down to her very bones even if she doesn’t know how she can keep it. “I wouldn’t.”

He grumbles something she can’t make out and then falls silent, content to simply hold her.

Somehow, for him, this is enough. 

She loves him.

“I love you.”

He sits up finally, looks her in the eye. His are red-rimmed, bloodshot, utterly exhausted, but they crinkle at the corners when he smiles at her.

“I love you too.”

She smiles back and kisses him, just a chaste brushing of her lips against his, then she kisses him once more when he doesn’t open his eyes after she pulls away. This one lingers, just for a second more, and then she remembers who they are and  _ where  _ they are and pulls away to sit back up on the cot.

“Everything’s… okay?” she asks, voice tentative. Obviously what she saw was wrong if they’re just… talking in the jail, not hiding in a bunker or  _ dead,  _ but she has to be sure. “I mean, I just collapsed and you brought me back here and literally nothing else happened?”

Sharky hauls himself up and sits next to her, leaning over to rest his elbows on his knees. He stares at the dirty linoleum as he answers, “No? You expectin’ something?”

She shakes her head and then leans it against his shoulder. “Nah. Just… just making sure.”

He makes that same grumbling noise again. “Lying?”

Her breath catches in her throat, and she thinks about lying to him again… then, she changes her mind.

He deserves to know the truth.

“I just thought… um, I guess it was a bliss hallucination or something, but I thought…” She trails off, looking down into her lap as she tries to remember the details of what she saw. She remembers the feeling of peace, then of terror, and the absolute certainty that if she  _ didn’t  _ do what Joseph wanted… everyone would die. “Uh, I saw mushroom clouds, like we’d been attacked.”

Sharky reaches over and wraps one arm around her shoulders, pulling her over into his space. She moves with him, resting her head on his chest even though the position is a little awkward. He kisses the top of her head. 

“Definitely nothin’ like that happened. Think they were just trying to scare you?” Sharky pitches his voice up like it’s a question, so Mattie nods against him. “Fucken bastards.”

Mattie giggles, surprised, then makes herself sit up under her own power to smile at him. He still looks like shit, but the tension has bled out of him a little, and he smiles back at her when he realizes that’s what she’s doing.

“Is there food here?”

Sharky perks up at the thought of being helpful, and he’s nodding at her even as he climbs to his feet. “Yeah, I’ll get you someth—”

Mattie grabs his arm and cuts him off mid-word as she pulls herself to her feet. She needs to stretch her legs, needs to look outside and make sure the air isn’t that awful radiation-green from her… not her vision. It  _ wasn’t  _ a vision. It was a hallucination, of some sort, that Faith… controls?

“We can go together,” Mattie says, instead of what she’s thinking, not letting Sharky argue with her this time either. “I need to see Whitehorse anyway.”

Sharky looks like he wants to protest, but he ends up just taking her hand after a minute and pulling her along behind him. There are a few other people laying down on other cots, but no one really talks to them. She gets one or two sympathetic looks, but that’s it. It’s reassuring, in a way, that no one looks like they’ve seen their fucking world obliterated in an explosion of terror.

Sharky pulls her past everyone else, not stopping to let her talk to anyone even if she wanted to, and she barely has time to look through the tiny, reinforced window in the outside door before he’s hauling her around the corner to the cell block where they’ve set up tables and chairs. 

The sky looks blue.

No ash drifts past the window, not that she can see.

She relaxes until she turns forward and sees Whitehorse and Tracey standing side-by-side with Virgil, all three of them staring at her with varying levels of worry on their faces. Whitehorse looks the most upset, not at the fact that she’s holding hands with Sharky this time, but just at her.

She stares back at him and puts her hand over her heart where the pain from the shot is the sharpest.

He flinches. It’s a cold comfort.

“You scared the hell out of us, Rook,” he says, a grimace still twisting his face. Sharky’s fingers tighten on hers as he continues, “We weren’t sure if you’d wake up.”

She shrugs and pulls her fingers free of Sharky’s grip so she can sit down on one of the stools. She leans against the counter and puts her chin in her hands, smiling a little when she sees Sharky digging through a box of MREs to find one she’ll like.

The expression quickly disappears.

“You feelin’ alright?” Tracey asks, one hand on her hip and her eyes appraising. “Come out of the bliss too fast and you’re liable to scramble your brain.”

Mattie nods as she says, “Yeah, I’m fine. I thought there had been a terrorist attack, but Sharky said I was wrong.”

Whitehorse’s frown deepens, and Mattie smothers a laugh when his mustache twitches. “What kind of attack?”

“Does it matter?” she knows her voice is too sharp, knows she’s getting defensive, but she can’t stop it. “It was a hallucination.”

Whitehorse grimaces. “It matters what Faith Seed is trying to show you.”

Mattie sucks her teeth. “A bomb. A fucking nuclear holocaust. Fall’s End was destroyed, on fire, ash and radiation in the air, everyone was dead…” Sharky’s hand on the back of her head cuts her off, and she lets herself be drawn against his chest so she can hide the tears she hadn’t noticed before in his hoodie. He puts something on the table in front of her and then rubs her back, and she bites her tongue to keep herself from crying harder at the tender way he’s cradling her.

“Are you gonna arrest me if I tell you to give her some space?” Sharky’s voice is too high-pitched, showing his nerves, but he doesn’t let go of Mattie, and he doesn’t pull away from Whitehorse, and Mattie doesn’t think she could love him more if she tried.

Whitehorse sighs loud enough for Mattie to hear, and then he says, “You’re not bad, kid.” 

Sharky flinches when Whitehorse pats his back; Mattie feels both the pat and the flinch with how closely she’s pressed to Sharky’s front, but she doesn’t move until she hears the door close behind them.

“I can’t believe people are staying here on purpose,” Sharky mutters. “I mean, I know it’s for protection an’ all, but every time I’ve been here, it’s been against my free will.”

Mattie giggles and wipes her cheeks dry with her sleeve.

“I'm just impressed you haven't been arrested since I moved here.” She offers him a little smile so he’ll know she’s just playing, and giggles again at the disgruntled expression on his face.

“I'll have you know I've gone longer without getting arrested,” he says, looking totally outraged. Mattie beams up at him and after just a second his ears tinge pink and he starts setting up one of the little flameless heaters from the MRE. “And, ‘sides, I was on probation anyway. I had to be on my best behavior.”

Once again Mattie finds herself marveling at the turn of events that brought her to this point, shaky and sick and pushing down false memories of nuclear annihilation to put her chin in her hand and croon, “Poor baby,” at her boyfriend.

Her boyfriend? She should probably ask.

For now, she enjoys the pink coloring his face and tries not to think about the bliss fields outside waiting for her.

\---

Mattie’s fully aware she’s skirting the line of Claritin overdose, but she keeps popping pills as often as she dares and keeps a dirty handkerchief tied over her face to keep the worst of the pollen out of her face. Sharky hovers just at the edge of her line of sight, flamethrower at the ready, keeping up a steady stream of chatter with Hurk even though Mattie can’t work up the energy to respond. Boomer stays far ahead of them, somehow always leading them to the closest group of peggies.

It’s exhausting, trying to cover so much ground of the Henbane with her eyes watering and vision sparking at the edges when she breathes too deeply. She can’t even work up the energy to do more than offer a small smile when Sharky looks at her to see if she’s laughing at his jokes.

She can see it’s worrying him, that each time she doesn’t giggle makes the lines around his mouth deepen just that much more and his jokes get just that much louder. Hurk picks up on it, starts walking a little closer to her, veering close enough to give her a jostling nudge with his elbow every now and then, but she just can’t.

She can’t.

They go back to the Hot Springs Hotel and clear it out, searching it from top to bottom more thoroughly than strictly necessary. She feels like she’s missing something with every room that she searches. It’s like she’s looking at herself searching the hotel instead of looking at the contents of the overturned dressers and the abandoned suitcases. She’s even responding slower to faraway sounds, blinking at the sound of Sharky yelling “You’ve just been Boshaw-ed!” from across the grounds instead of smiling and realizing what it means. 

It’s weird and she doesn’t like it and she can tell Sharky’s worried about her but she doesn’t know how to make him feel better about it. She just doesn’t.

One eye on her, they steal a car and Hurk drives them to their next location down the highway while Mattie stretches out on the backseat with her arm over her eyes.

Then they get out and start it all over again.

Hurk and Sharky are searching the recently-liberated brewery for beer the cult hasn’t destroyed when she hears yelling by the road. Boomer lifts his ears and starts to trot off in that direction, so she follows.

There’s a peggie standing in front of a bound, kneeling civilian. Mattie stares at them for too long, trying to hear over the blood rushing in her ears, trying to decide if this is truly happening or if it’s another hallucination sent from Faith.

She doesn’t see spots in her vision right now, but she didn’t last time either.

Boomer sits at her side and that doesn’t help her make up her mind either. She looks down at his cute little face (with one ear flipped inside out) and then she picks up a rock by his paw and throws it as hard as she can at the peggie.

If it’s a bliss hallucination, the rock will pass right through. If it’s not…

The rock hits the peggie in the temple and he falls back with a cry. The civilian flinches away, then pushes himself up to his feet so he can run away as the peggie unleashes a stream of words Mattie’s pretty sure aren’t Joseph-approved.

Boomer moves before she can figure out what to do next, leaping up and tearing out the peggie’s throat.

Mattie shakes off her stupor and follows at a jog, pistol in hand, and puts the peggie out of his misery.

The civilian is nowhere to be seen.

She’s still standing in the center of one of the lanes, staring down at the peggie, her gun clutched in her hands, when she hears Hurk shouting from back near the brewery’s entrance. She stands up straight and turns toward the noise, but it feels almost like she’s swimming, all her senses on a three-second delay.

She sees Sharky first, barreling toward her at full speed, his hat and weapons gone, and she doesn’t have time to do anything before he rams into her, wrapping his arms around her torso and lifting her with the sheer force of his momentum. 

It knocks the wind out of her, pushes her back out of the way of the oncoming semi truck. From the other lane, she watches as it flashes by, painted peggie-white, the ugly cross on the door taunting her as she gasps for air in Sharky’s bruising grip.

Neither of them speak for several seconds, several long seconds where she can see Hurk trudging across the brewery’s yard. He stops and picks up Sharky’s hat where it must have fallen off, and then her attention snaps back to Sharky as he moves his grip to her shoulders to hold her away from him.

“Mattie, what the  _ fuck?” _

“Wh-what?”

He shakes her, and it’s like it clears up some of the fog that’s been following her around since she woke up in the jail. She looks at him, really looks at him, at the bags under his wild eyes and his windswept, sweaty hair, and she can’t think of anything to say.

“You can’t just wander off! You gotta pay attention! What are you thinking?” A little shake punctuates each of his sentences, and she feels sweat breaking out on her skin as tears spring to her eyes. “That truck almost hit you!”

“I woulda been fine.”

The words are out before she can think about them, before she can think about how Sharky will react to that attitude from her  _ again,  _ and he drops her before he can shake her again. She rocks back on her heels, reaches for him because she can’t bear to stand on her own now, and he lets her tangle her fingers in his hoodie without moving away.

“I don’t wanna fuckin’ see that,” he says, voice too loud. Behind him, Hurk is slowly drawing closer, not quite aware yet that they’re fighting. “If you’re too bliss-sick to see peggies coming at you, we’ll go back to the jail so you can sleep it off.”

“It’s not bliss, I’m fine, I’m just… I’m so  _ tired,  _ Sharky,” she tugs on his hoodie so he won’t interrupt her, won’t stop her from saying what she needs to say so he can insist on returning to the jail. “I can’t stop — Faith has Burke, Joseph still has control of the County. If I wait, people die for good.”

“What happens when you get hit by a car and just break both your legs?” He grabs her arms again but doesn’t shake her, just holds her still. “Who’s gonna die if you don’t pay attention?”

“I’m  _ sorry,” _ she starts, leaning her weight against him so he’ll have to hold her up, and he does, but Hurk interrupts them before she has a chance to say anything else.

“Dep, you scared the shit outta us!”

Sharky doesn’t look away from Mattie’s face, but she looks around him to meet Hurk’s gaze. He’s smiling, trying to calm her, but he looks nearly as worried as Sharky was.

“I didn’t mean to.”

Hurk shrugs, closes the distance between them and pulls her out of Sharky’s grasp with gentle fingers. Sharky lets her go, and she releases his hoodie, and Hurk tugs them behind him as he heads back to the brewery.

“Didn’t nobody tell you to look both ways before you cross the street? You’re a cop!”

She laughs, but she doesn’t mean it. She thinks the boys know that too.

Sharky’s right, though. If she runs herself ragged and just gets seriously injured, something more than the scratches and clean wounds she’s had so far, she won’t be able to rescue Burke or kill Faith or kill Joseph.

“I’m sorry,” she says, again, and each man squeezes the hand they’re holding.

“Listen, Sharky’s my baby cousin, and long as you’re with him, you’re my family too, okay? And I don’t know where you’re from, but we take care of family ‘round here.”

She doesn’t have a hand free to wipe her face, but she tries to dry her cheeks with her shoulder. Sharky squeezes her hand again, and she squeezes it back, and she lets them park her in a chair in the brewery’s office while they go looking for a cot for her to sleep on.

She’s asleep before they come back.

\---

She wakes up feeling stiff and dehydrated, but more alert, alone on the cot in the brewery’s office. She finds a half-empty water cooler and drinks right out of the faucet, bent over and twisted around because finding a cup is too much work. It makes her feel less like she’s just slept for eighteen hours after pushing herself to the brink of exhaustion and more like she’s in the process of switching from night shift back to days, and this is a level of tired she can work with without accidentally putting herself or Sharky in danger.

She finds the boys together, both still sound asleep, in the brewery’s break room. There’s about a dozen empty bottles on the table, and Hurk is snoring on his back on the larger of two couches while Sharky’s contorted to fit his long legs on the loveseat. 

She climbs on the cushions with him even though there’s no way they’ll both fit, and he contorts himself more to make room for her before he even wakes up all the way. When he finally comes to, it’s because she’s tucked her head under his chin and worked her hands up under his hoodie to press against the warmth of his stomach.

“I’m sorry, baby.” She starts apologizing in a whisper as soon as she’s sure he’ll understand her words through the haze of sleep. “I have to take better care of myself. I didn’t mean to scare you. Thank you for taking care of me.”

Sharky doesn’t respond right away, just takes a deep breath and then lets it out all at once. Mattie holds her breath and bites her tongue, not sure if he’s going to scold her again or if he’s still angry, but then he’s squeezing her body tighter against his and kissing the top of her head. 

“You just scared the shit outta me, s’all,” he mutters, words nearly disappearing into her hair. “I thought that truck was gonna really hurt you.”

“I know,” she says, tilting her head up to press the words against his throat. “I’m sorry.”

He grumbles and squeezes her tighter. “Don’t do it again, okay? I’d miss you if you up’n left now.”

“Okay.”

“Now that y’all got that all worked out, can we get breakfast? I’m starving.”

Mattie giggles at Hurk’s words even as Sharky heaves a dramatic sigh, burrowing closer to him instead of giving in and getting up. “I think it’s your turn to cook, Hurk.”

The couch groans as Hurk heaves himself upright. “Alright, I get it. You want some alone time. You got ten minutes.”

Mattie’s still giggling when the door to the break room shuts behind Hurk, and then she shrieks when Sharky twists them around to put her between his body and the couch. He curls around her, tucking his head under her chin instead in a mirror image of how they had been before, and she wraps arms and legs around him to hold him as tight as possible.

It’s quiet, and it’s intimate, and she hates that it took all of this hell for them to find each other.

She  _ hates  _ it.

They deserve more than this.

\---

Jessop Conservatory isn’t that far from the brewery, closer to the jail but on the opposite side of the river. Hurk pulls over down the street without being told so they can sneak in, grumbling about how Hope County is like having a war zone outside his house. A shadow passes over his face as he says it, and Mattie wonders once again just how much truth is his stories of the Rook Islands and Kyrat.

Peggies are swarming the Jessop’s old place, higher-ranking members supervising angels as they work with rows and rows of bliss plants growing in containers around the yard. Mattie pulls her handkerchief up higher over her face, covering her already running nose, and winks at Sharky when she catches his gaze.

“You ready for this, shorty?”

He’s uncharacteristically serious, fiddling with his shotgun shells, not quite looking at her now that he’s checked in with her, like he’s not really sure what her answer’s gonna be.

Honestly, with all the bliss pollen in the air, she’s not a hundred percent sure of her answer either.

“Yeah, babe,” she says, answering with confidence she doesn’t really feel. “It’s all good. It’s just the plants, not the oil. You and Hurk burn as many of them as you can without setting the house on fire, and I’ll take care of the peggies when they start getting too close. Deal?”

Sharky brightens at that, turning to face her fully, and she smiles back at him even though he can only see her eyes.

“You ready, Hurky?”

Hurk hefts his RAT-4 higher on his shoulders and flashes them both a grin.

“Ready.”

The peggies are so distracted by Sharky and Hurk that no one notices Mattie dashing in to yank the wires out of their radios, even when she trips over an angel and has to break its neck to keep it from screaming and alerting everyone to her presence.

As far as the peggies are aware, the Drubman cousins have decided to really fuck up their day totally independently of the Sinner everyone's supposed to be looking for.

She climbs onto the roof of one of the sheds and uses her rifle to pick off peggie stragglers, thinning the crowd for the boys. She can hear them cheering and laughing over the din of battle, more keeping each other's spirits high than really rejoicing in the carnage, and she smiles to herself as she scopes out her next target.

She really stumbled into some good ones out here. Jess and Grace might have helped her take this place without making a peep about it, but who looks out for her like Sharky? Who keeps her distracted from aches and pains like Hurk?

She leaves the boys in charge of burning the rest of the bliss plants while she heads inside.

It’s deathly quiet inside, even with Hurk and Sharky still wandering around outside, and the hairs on the back of her arms stand up as she walks through what used to be the nicest house in the county. There are dirty mattresses everywhere, Faith’s catchphrases painted in a shaky hand on the walls, notes and chemical formulas Mattie would never recognize in a million years scribbled on scraps of paper and post-it notes and directly on the walls.

Where are the Jessops now? 

What would they think of what happened to their home?

The upstairs is a little better, but the clouds of pollen aren’t nearly as thick. She pulls her bandana down and takes a slow breath of the cleaner, cool air and sighs as the familiar stars start dancing around the edge of her vision.

This fucking sucks.

She replaces the bandana and sorts through the loose papers on the desk, looking for anything that might let her know where Faith’s base of operations is. This is obviously an important landmark for the cult, but so’s the Joseph statue and the Misery, and Faith isn’t working out of those locations either (probably — Mattie wouldn’t be wholly surprised if Faith literally worked in a giant statue of the cult leader).

She’s not entirely surprised when she hears footsteps on the stairs behind her, or the creaking of a floorboard to her right, but when she turns with a smile to greet Sharky…

_ “Welcome to the bliss.” _

Another cloud of bliss hits her full in the face, clogs up her sinuses and infuriates her. She wants to lunge for Faith and rip her hair out, but she's not in control of her own body. She can't make her hands work, can't make her legs push herself forward.

Sharky’s going to be so pissed if this is the dose of bliss that finally kills her. 

She’s back in that stupid field, with the stupid rabbits that have the stupid antlers, but she can’t do anything but watch as Faith shoves at her shoulders, sweet veneer starting to crack to show the anger underneath. She might not be a Seed in blood, but she’s a Seed in every other way that matters, and Mattie thinks she’s able to snarl back when Faith starts to talk.

“Don’t you understand what we’re trying to build?” Faith shoves her again, not hard, but hard enough to push her back a good ten feet through the tickling grass.

It makes her ankles itch, even through her dirty jeans, and she wonders if that’s part of the bliss hallucination or just a reaction to the pollen. Maybe she really is allergic, and she’s just going to go anaphylactic and die before anything else can happen.

Mattie’s still looking at Faith across the field when she takes her hands and turns her around. Faith is there, behind her, still angry, almost pouting, and Mattie blinks in annoyance. Can’t she just move like a human person? Why does she have to flit around like this?

“Do you just not care?”

_ Nope.  _ She tries to say it, but she can’t. Her mouth doesn’t work, and that just pisses her off more.

“Why do you run this way and that inflicting violence on those who wish no harm upon you?”

That’s the biggest load of bullshit Mattie’s heard recently, and she’d tell Faith if she could. She settles for thinking it.

Loudly.

“We’re at peace here. We’ve worked hard to be here.” Faith pulls her along behind her, then releases her and starts to skip. It’s an innocent, little-girl routine that would have worked on Mattie too one or two bliss hallucinations ago, or before she saw what happened to the Conservatory, but now? 

“I know you have your doubts--”  _ That’s a fuckin’ understatement--  _ “but this is the only way the story ends! Nothing you can do can change that. Your friends on the outside are controlled by  _ fear.  _ They don’t understand… but he does. He’ll show you.”

Faith points, and Mattie looks, and then Faith is there again to help her climb into a rowboat.

A rowboat with Burke.

Fuckin’ Burke.

He’s smiling at her, so happy, so  _ blissful,  _ and he’s speaking gently instead of snarling and swearing at anyone who gets too close, and she’s so surprised she sits on the bench across from him and just… listens.

He’s stained and dirty just like Staci and Joey were, but he doesn’t look like he cares about  _ anything  _ except for Faith anymore.

“I know you’re here to take me back,” he says, and she’s at least able to nod at him as Faith’s hold on her loosens. “It’s okay. She knows. Everybody knows. You think you’re doing the right thing, you think I need to be rescued… but, I don’t. I don’t want to go back.”

He sighs and smiles as some of Faith’s butterflies land on the bulletproof vest he’s still wearing. Mattie stares as they flutter their wings, wonders if she’ll ever be able to see a butterfly again without thinking about fucking Faith.

She’s so distracted by a hummingbird hovering in front of her face that she almost misses Burke’s next words, almost falls for the illusion that Faith is painting for them.

“Have you ever looked at how your life has really turned out?” he asks, words eerily reminiscent of how Jacob was taunting her just a few days ago. Dread turns in her belly, but she just blinks at him and waits for him to finish parroting Faith’s thoughts at her. “I mean… what you’ve actually done with it, you know? We’re told we can be anything, right?”  _ Wrong.  _ “Um, a famous singer, a Hall-of-Famer, a movie star… we’re all gonna be a success, Rook.”

They’re still moving down the river, but he’s stopped rowing. He’s just gripping the oars in his hands and staring her down, like he can talk her into doing something just by the sheer intensity of his stare.

That might have worked before, that definitely worked when he came swaggering into Hope County with his fucking federal warrant and his fucking Marshal’s badge, but now? 

Absolutely fucking not.

“Well now,” he chuckles, he fucking  _ laughs,  _ “that’s just not true.” He starts rowing again, apparently unconcerned with where they’re going, not even looking at her anymore in favor of admiring the green-tinged world around them. “We live mundane lives, just doing what somebody else tells us to do. Day after day… Everybody thinks they’ve got free will, but, c’mon, when’s the last time you did something that wasn’t required?”

And… okay, he almost has her there. Almost everything she’s been doing since the failed raid on the compound has been because she  _ had  _ to do it, because someone told her to or because no one else would. She wouldn’t have voluntarily killed the Seeds, or voluntarily raided their bunkers alone, or ventured out into the Henbane to even  _ look  _ for Burke -- she did those things because she  _ had to. _

But… she’s doing other things because she wants to. She’s spending time with Sharky, she’s falling in love, she’s building a new family from people she didn’t know would see her like that.

She  _ wants  _ those things. 

She wants the love and the family so bad it hurts, and yet she’s putting those things at risk to fucking find  _ Burke  _ of all people? Burke who doesn’t even want to be rescued? Burke who’s actively working  _ against  _ her?

God  _ fucking _ damn it.

“--we don’t live our own lives. We live  _ theirs.” _ He’s staring at her again so intensely she doesn’t know what to do about it, so she just clenches her jaw and stares right back. “And when we think we have free will, well that is just a lie, an  _ illusion.  _ Ah, oh man, I am so done with that. I am done with being a Yes Man. I am done with being an errand boy, and I am done with being the garbage collector. I am so done.”

He pushes the oars aside and rests his elbows on his knees, looking away, and when he looks back at her, she can see tears in his eyes and hear the tremble in his voice. He must have been so miserable before Faith found him.

Mattie doesn’t fucking care.

“Because… if that is real life, then what is the point? This place gave me the chance to become something I thought I could never be: happy.” The boat runs up on the shore, and the butterflies fly away. Burke smiles at her, palms pressed together, then gets up and climbs out of the boat.

He turns back to her, smiles a little, and adds, “And in the end, Rook… isn’t that the only thing that really matters? Happiness?”

He presses his palms together and does a little bow, then wanders off, picking flowers as he goes.

No one comes to move her. Faith doesn’t pop up to tug her along or to plead with her. No bombs go off, Joseph doesn’t show off his chest, and she’s just… sitting there.

She blinks.

She stands up.

“Burke?”

Her voice works. 

Her body works.

She climbs out of the boat and takes off after Burke at the fastest run she can manage with the bliss still in her mind and making sparks dance at the corners of her eyes. Her shoes are soaked, her feet sink into the mud, and she can practically hear Whitehorse telling her to rescue Burke as she pushes through waist-high grass.

She’s close enough to tackle him when it occurs to her she might be about to pounce on a bear, or off the edge of a cliff, or into the river.

She doesn’t care enough to stop.

She lunges, grabbing Burke around his knees and pushing him forward. He falls forward with a cry and her vision starts to go white as she hauls herself up his body to get his arms tied behind his back.

She can hear Faith from far away, furious, desperate.

She doesn’t care.

She finally got him.

Finally.

\---

This time, she wakes up to Tracey checking her pupils with a flashlight nearly too big for the purpose, sore and nauseated with a pounding head, and she doesn’t feel afraid. She doesn’t think the world has ended or that the world is going to end, she doesn’t have the icky feeling of dread crawling over her skin.

“You’re doin’ great,” Tracey says, and Mattie smiles up at her for the half-second they have before Burke starts to lose his shit in the next cot.

Tracey jumps to help Whitehorse, and then Sharky’s in Mattie’s space, looking as haggard and worn out as he had the last time she returned from Faith’s grasp. He puts his body between her and the fight, carding his fingers through her hair and holding all her attention even as the other scene gets louder.

White sparks dance around him as the last of the bliss leaves her system, make him look like something straight out of a romance novel. He looks pretty like this, all dark hair and blue eyes and deep laugh lines, worried about her like she’s the most important thing in the whole world.

He smiles as she stares at him, not even flinching as Tracey and Whitehorse start yelling at each other behind him.

“You’re real pretty too, shorty. I’m glad you’re okay.”


	13. Chapter 13

Burke is still unconscious when Mattie finds herself dragged back to wakefulness by nearby voices. She curls on her side to look at him, bringing her threadbare blanket up to cover most of her face, and just… lets herself sit in the quiet, in the stillness, enjoying just for a minute the peace that comes between waking up and having to fucking _do_ things.

Nobody’s bothered to take Burke out of his gear, and she stares at his vest, remembers the way the butterflies had swarmed over it like it was a flower. He’d been so _happy_ in the bliss — still sort of condescending and obviously an asshole under the good mood, but he’d been so much happier than when she first met him at the jail.

How long ago even was that? Weeks? Months? She’s totally lost track of time, doesn’t even know what day of the week it is (or what _time_ it is) and she has no idea when she’s found herself. It isn’t quite winter yet, it hasn’t started snowing at least, and even though the cold snap in the air at night is too much for her she knows it’s going to get worse.

Christ, she is _not_ fucking walking around the Henbane after Faith once winter really hits.

There’s no fucking way.

Has her birthday passed? That's a reason to find out the date if nothing else is.

She draws in a deep breath and forces herself to sit up, letting the blanket pool around her waist. She's spent enough time wallowing on the cot; she has more to do before she can really rest.

She chews on her lower lip as she considers, goes over her list of things to do in the Henbane. Tracey wants that statue of Joseph gone, the youth camp needs clearing, the vet needs tracked down, the production of bliss stopped. 

Just thinking about all that makes her want to curl back up and sleep for eighteen more hours, but that's not who she is. She can do this.

She _has_ to do this.

She doesn’t have any choice.

She’s almost done restocking her ammo (and trading a bag of what Sharky has carefully and clearly labeled “oregano” for his flamethrower part) when Whitehorse comes through the outside door. The bag of oregano disappears almost as soon as the sunlight hits it and she struggles not to just start laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

What has Hope County come to?

If Whitehorse notices the transaction, he doesn’t mention it. Instead, he launches directly into the next thing he wants her to do in the region: Cougars are taken to a place called “the Misery,” an abandoned mining operation farther north in the region on the edge of the river, tortured, and killed if they don’t agree to walk the Path set forward by Faith. 

It’s a fucking nightmare, and Mattie’s agreeing even before she stops to think about it.

She’s sore, and she’s exhausted, and she doesn’t know if Burke is going to survive, and she can’t really breathe out of one nostril because of all the bliss pollen, and the last thing she wants to do is spend hours driving across the county and fighting cult members who just don’t give a fuck if they live or die.

Then again… how can she say no?

\---

There are hostages still in the Misery when they get there. She can see one on the roof, hands bound behind her back and head hanging low, kneeling between two peggies with their rifles in their hands. 

There are probably more, but she can’t see them from here.

She should have called Grace or Jess to help. 

This isn’t a job for fast-and-loud, it’s a job for slow-and-quiet.

She’ll have to make due.

The first few peggies, the ones patrolling the outskirts of the cult-claimed property, fall easily under her sniper rifle. She watches dispassionately as they land in puddles of their own blood, only hesitating long enough to make sure one has died before moving onto the next.

Behind her, well out of sight of the patrolling peggies, Hurk and Sharky are muttering to each other about something she can’t quite hear. They’re keeping each other busy and watching her back, and it’s such an amazing change from her first few days in the Resistance, sneaking around John’s region and constantly dying that she nearly starts to cry. Tears well in her eyes and she has to wipe them dry on her sleeve before she can shoot again, almost totally unable to see.

How can she ever pay them back for what they’re doing?

The answer comes to her as the next peggie falls.

She can take down the cult and give them their home back.

When the last peggie she can see falls, she drags herself to her feet and switches to her handgun, signaling to Sharky and Hurk that it’s time to move in. They go as quietly as they can — which is not all that quietly in the scheme of things — and they take the Misery from both sides.

The whole building is sinking into the river, and Mattie sloshes through water up to her ankles as she creeps through the first floor. She falls into habits from the Academy, moving inexorably forward without worrying about what the boys are up to on the higher levels.

There’s another peggie, a hostage kneeling in the water with her hands bound, and he falls with two quick, silenced shots from her pistol. The hostage flinches, curls in on herself, and she tries to rip herself away when Mattie kneels by her side to cut her bonds.

The woman makes a run for it without stopping to thank her.

Mattie moves on.

Sharky meets her at the top of the stairs, shotgun in a white-knuckled grip, face grim.

“You’ll wanna see this.”

She doesn’t know what she expects based on Sharky’s attitude, but it certainly isn’t three dead civilians suspended in cages over the Henbane. One of them was reaching a hand through the bars when they died, and blood still drips from their fingers into the water below.

Bile rises in her throat, pushed on by the guilt that she wasn’t fast enough, that she spent too long deliberating about what to do, too long watching them through the scope on her sniper rifle. She swallows hard, takes a shuddering breath and swallows again. Sharky leans against her, his weight a comforting pressure at her side, and she grinds her teeth together _hard_ to keep her reaction in check.

“Okay,” she says, voice low. “Okay, uh…”

Whitehorse’s voice comes over the radio before she has time to figure out what to do, before she has time to figure out how to get these people out of their cages and figure out who their families are so they can actually be buried like they’re real people, and he’s warning them that they’re about to get more peggies. A cult priestess is on the way, because why wouldn’t that be a thing in Faith’s region, via the river, and Mattie opens her mouth to say they should just leave but it’s too late.

There are a couple mounted guns on this side of the Misery, and the boys each take one, and she switches to her AR-C and ducks as low as she can behind the metal wall.

She hates this.

She’s good at it.

She manages to bring down the first peggie boat she sees by spraying it with enough bullets that the inflatable part bursts and the three peggies riding in it fall into the water. Sharky cheers from off to her right, yells that she’s doing a good job, and then bullets from his mounted gun join hers.

It’s chaotic and it’s messy and the people in the boats are shooting back at them as they weave their way up and down the river, back and forth in front of the Misery like they’ll be able to wear them down through sheer annoyance, and Mattie chews on the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood.

She ignores the explosions she hears out of habit, because they’re too far away to mean she’s in imminent danger, and traveling with Sharky and Hurk have taught her to expect some measure of nearby explosions anyway.

If she stopped to think about how different her life is now, she’d cry, so she won’t.

Another boat joins the fray, spinning around the nearest curve in the river with a spray of water, and Mattie’s rifle clicks empty. 

“Shit. Hurk!” She drops to her knees behind the wall, turning slightly toward Hurk as she fumbles with another mag. “Boat!”

“On it, boss!” His voice is as cheery as ever, the strain barely audible under the optimism, and she can see him turning in the right direction out of the corner of her eyes. Bless him.

She doesn’t know when it goes wrong, when everything takes a sharp turn to the left. Is it when she’s sliding the new mag into the rifle? Is it when she’s taking half a second to crack her neck to get the kink out of it? Is it when she pops her head up over the metal wall to scope out the river instead of shooting right away?

She doesn’t notice it right away either, doesn’t hear the lack of gunfire from Sharky’s side, doesn’t hear him falling or calling for help. She only realizes something’s wrong when she doesn’t hear him cracking a joke about the cult priestesses being hot, or blurting out some awkward story about him making out with someone near here when he was growing up, or complaining about all the dead bodies piling up around them.

She only realizes when it’s quiet.

“Sharky, man, where’d you go?”

She closes her eyes and pushes her knuckles into the scar tissue on her chest, folding in on herself. Hurk doesn’t know. He hasn’t seen this before.

“Dep? Do you see—?” He cuts himself off when he realizes what must have happened, when he sees Mattie curling in on herself and away from him, and she just listens as he starts to wail.

“Wake up, Sharky, please, c’mon, man…”

She finally makes herself look when she’s fully on the floor, all of her weight resting on the cold metal, blood and river water seeping into her jeans. Sharky’s flat on his back near the mounted gun he’d been using, Hurk poised above him, pushing rhythmically into the center of his chest.

CPR.

Sharky wasn’t breathing.

“Dep, help me with this, c’mon!”

He’s begging, voice wet, desperate, and Mattie crawls over to him through the fog wrapping around her. It feels like before, like the three-second delay from when she’d almost been hit by the semi is back and trying to hold her captive.

Sharky’s green hoodie is stained dark with blood that’s no longer flowing, the puddle under him bigger than however much blood is left inside him. It seeps into Mattie’s jeans too, covering her knees and her hands as she puts her them on his chest, then on his neck looking for a pulse she knows she won’t find.

“No, no, no, no, no.”

Hurk is chanting his denials, still trying to force Sharky’s heart to restart, tears and snot covering his face.

“The fuck are you doing? Help me!”

Mattie reaches for Hurk’s hands, tries to pull him away, but he doesn’t let her. He keeps going until Mattie hears the tell-tale snap that lets her know he’s cracked one of Sharky’s ribs.

“Hurk, it’s okay. It’s okay, you can stop.”

“Fuck you, ‘you can stop’,” Hurk yells, absolutely howls, voice wrecked with his sobs. “Fuck you, he said you loved him.”

She starts to cry too. “I do, I do love him, Hurk. He’s okay. He’s fine. He’s fine.”

“He’s _dead.”_

“He’s not — he is now, but he won’t be. We just have to go to his trailer and you’ll see, I promise. I promise, Hurk.” She reaches for him again, and this time he lets her stop his movements even if he only moves his hands up to cradle Sharky’s body against his chest. “If we go to his trailer, he’ll walk right out to see us.”

“You finally lost it,” Hurk says, voice cracking. “The bliss made you insane.”

“No, it didn’t, I promise.” She hesitates, then stands up, wiping her face with the backs of her hands. She can tell she’s gotten his blood on her face when it goes all sticky instead of dry, but she ignores it. “Come with me, please.”

Hurk studies her for an endless moment, chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath. Whatever he sees in her face must convince him she’s serious, because he’s nodding before she realizes it and standing with Sharky still cradled in his arms.

“Get the launcher,” he says, voice subdued, and then he’s turning around and carrying Sharky’s body down the stairs.

Mattie grabs up his RAT-4 and follows.

Hurk takes his time tucking Sharky into the backseat of their car, laying him across it and tucking his legs up so he’s resting comfortably. Mattie puts the rocket launcher in the trunk and then climbs in the passenger seat when it’s clear Hurk wants to be the one to drive.

They’re silent all the way back across the Henbane and up the mountain to where Boshaw Manor rests down the road from the Moonflower.

Hurk keeps crying softly, not making any noises louder than little gasps to catch his breath. Mattie keeps her eyes on the bloodstains on her knees as they dry into stiff swaths of denim. 

She’s never going to get Sharky’s blood out of the fabric, and she chokes on a sob.

This is ridiculous. She’s seen this happen before, she knows Sharky’s okay. She knows as soon as they get to his house, he’ll be hanging out on his couch or lighting shit on fire, or whatever it is he does when she’s not around to watch him. She knows he’ll come back and he’ll be exactly as happy as he ever was with no memory of what happened to him, but…

She can’t watch someone she loves _die_ and not feel anything.

She buries her face in the crook of one elbow, pulling her feet up on the seat so she can curl in on herself, and she tries to hold in her wail since Hurk is sitting in the driver’s seat.

She’s not alone.

She doesn’t have to be alone.

She jumps when she feels fingers on hers, flinching away just out of instinct, but they don’t go away and when she looks up, it’s just Hurk, reaching out to comfort her the way he knows she likes it best.

She wipes her snotty face on the handkerchief still tied around her neck and holds his hand in hers as they finish their drive.

Sharky’s SUV is in front of the trailer when they pull up the gravel drive, and Hurk grumbles something Mattie doesn’t hear because she’s too busy throwing herself out of the car and running toward the door. 

“Sharky? Babe, you here?”

The front door isn’t locked, and it slams open as she bursts through. It bounces off the opposite wall and hits her as it swings shut again, and she takes the bruise on her forearm in her haste to just get the fuck inside.

“Sharky?”

“You here, cuz?”

She can hear Hurk outside, voice low like he doesn’t really believe he’s going to hear Sharky’s voice calling back to him. It’s like he’s humoring her, and she lets him, because she knows, she _knows_ Sharky’s going to come back. 

He always has, just like she always has.

It’s like they’re meant to be.

The trailer is damningly empty even so, a fine layer of dust on everything like it hasn’t been used in a bit. She looks in the bedroom, shoulders into the bathroom, looks in the fucking closet like he’d be hiding behind the door, before bursting back out into his yard like her hair’s on fire.

Hurk is standing there, staring at the pile of tires, hands in his pockets and head hanging low on his neck.

He’s given up.

She won’t.

She can’t.

“Sharky _Fucking_ Boshaw, you get out here right this second!”

She uses her Cop Voice by accident, despite the swear word, hands on her hips and chin up to project. A small flock of birds lifts off from the other side of the house and scream accusingly back at her, but she doesn’t care.

If Sharky doesn’t show up right now she’s going to fucking _lose it._

“Hold your goddamn horses, shit, can’t a man clean out his bunker in peace? Jesus.” Sharky keeps up a steady stream of complaints as he climbs the ladder that leads up out of his bunker, nestled under a shed roof and behind a rock.

She hadn’t even known it existed to look there.

Hurk meets him at the top with a bear hug so strong it almost knocks him right back in, and Sharky squawks in protest. Mattie’s knees go out as relief hits her harder than one of Hurk’s hugs, and she sits down hard on the lowest porch step and closes her eyes. 

“Get off me, man, the hell are you doing? I love you too, Hurky, but you gotta—” His voice lowers, morphing from loud protests to normal-volume concern. “What happened? You okay? Is Mattie—”

“I fuckin’ saw you _die_ over at the Misery!” Hurk’s voice has not softened, is now almost as loud as it was when he was swearing at Mattie over Sharky’s dead body. “You got shot down by the peggies and you quit breathin’, and—”

His voice trails off again, gets muffled like his face is being pushed against something, and Mattie’s pretty sure that something is Sharky’s shoulder but she can’t bring herself to open her eyes to look. She doesn’t have the energy while her jeans are still stiff with blood.

The silence stretches on ast he boys comfort each other, leaving Mattie alone to sit on the porch with her temple resting against the rail. 

She jumps when Hurk starts talking again, just a few feet away from her, loud and incredulous. Sharky gives her a soft look when he sees her flinch, but he doesn’t move from Hurk’s side.

She’s seen Sharky die a few times now.

Hurk hasn’t.

She doesn’t realize she’s been asked a question right away, not until Hurk repeats himself a little louder.

“What’s going on here, Dep? What the fuck happened?”

“I don’t know,” she says, voice quiet, catching on her dry throat. Hurk opens his mouth to argue so she tries again, louder this time: “I just… ever since we tried to arrest Joseph at the compound, when… when something _bad_ happens, I just… I wake back up a couple minutes before, with enough time to fix it and keep going.”

“What’s ‘something bad’?” Hurk’s not ready to let her talk her way out of this one, and he sits on the porch next to her, one step up, turned to face her a little with an uncharacteristically serious expression twisting his mouth. “Say whatever you mean.”

Sharky follows his cousin, pushing between the two of them to sit behind Mattie. She starts to lean against his legs, but he pulls her up until she’s sitting in his lap and he can wrap his arms fully around her waist. She lets him, moving with him, and tangles their fingers together without thinking about it as she tries to find the words to answer Hurk.

“Right after the helicopter crash,” she says, speaking slowly and weighing each word before she says it, “I was escaping with Burke from the compound. He was driving and I was trying to keep the road clear, and one of the peggies managed to get a grenade right through the window.”

Her voice catches as she remembers seeing the grenade land in her lap, and she clears her throat to keep going.

“It exploded, and it _hurt,_ and then it happened again. I threw it back out the window and it got the guy who threw it, I think, and we kept going. It… it just _keeps happening,_ Hurk. I… look.” She pushes her left sleeve up to show him her forearm, covered in tally marks. “I’ve… I’ve been shot, I’ve been strangled, I’ve drowned, I’ve fallen off of things? I’ve exploded, I’ve crashed vehicles, a plane landed on me once…” Sharky’s arms tighten around her, so tight she can barely breathe, but she pushes forward. “Every single time, I wake back up with enough time to correct whatever I did wrong.”

She runs out of words and she licks her dry lips as the silence lays heavy between them. Sharky kisses her back, then rests his cheek against her.

“So you die? You die and then you come back? Like a, like a fuckin’ video game?”

She can’t tell what Hurk is feeling from the way he responds. The look on his face is almost carefully blank, like he’s trying not to show her what he’s thinking, and she stiffens in Sharky’s grip.

“I can’t explain it better than that, Hurk. I die and then I come back and then I have to do this all over again.”

Hurk looks at Sharky, then back at Mattie. “And that happens for Sharky too?”

“Yeah. Sharky and Jess both, probably Boomer too. He kind of comes and goes. Jude, from up in the Whitetails, died on our way into Jacob’s bunker and was back the next day in the Wolf’s Den.”

“I don’t remember being at the Misery, though.” Sharky’s voice is kind of quiet, quieter than usual at least, and he presses his forehead against Mattie’s shoulder for a second before he adds, “Everytime she shows up and says somethin’ bad happened, I don’t remember. I’m just here, hanging out, waiting to hear she needs me somewhere.”

Hurk heaves himself to his feet without a word and goes into the trailer. A second later, the door on the other side opens and closes. 

“You okay?” Sharky pulls Mattie closer, kissing her cheek and then resting his chin on her shoulder while he waits for her to answer.

“I will be,” she says, because the whole truth of it is that she’s _not._ The first time she saw Sharky die, she reacted the same way Hurk had, had nearly lost it, had only left his side because John’s people kidnapped her from under Grace’s nose. This is the third time at least, and she had to see him bleeding out _again,_ had to see Hurk facing that fact.

She’s not okay, but she will be.

Hurk comes back through the trailer before Sharky can say anything else, wide-eyed and mouth a little open like he’s seen something he wasn’t expecting.

“The body’s gone.”

Sharky sits straight up. _“What?”_

“Your body’s gone! We brought it with us, and it’s gone!”

Sharky takes a deep breath against Mattie’s back, and then he chokes out a laugh. “Well, uh’course it’s gone, my body’s right here.”

Mattie sags against him, too tired to laugh at his simple summary of the situation.

He’s not… he’s not wrong.

Hurk puts his hands on his hips and stares down at the pair of them, at the still-chuckling Sharky, always ready to laugh off his problems, and at the pliant but smiling Mattie, absorbing comfort through body contact the way she always does, and heaves the heaviest sigh Mattie’s ever heard.

He turns around without another word and disappears back into the trailer.

“You sure you’re okay?”

Mattie shrugs, jostling Sharky’s head a bit, but he doesn’t let her go. He needs this as much as she does, somehow. He never seemed to get tired of how she always wants to sprawl across him.

She loves him.

“This helps.”

He squeezes her again and stays quiet until Hurk comes back, then he’s groaning in the exasperated way only younger siblings can manage. “C’mon, man.”

Mattie opens one eye, not sure when she closed it, and finally starts to laugh for real as Hurk settles down on the steps next to them with a lime green bong in one hand and one of Sharky’s many lighters in the other.

“I should arrest you for that.”

Hurk offers her his most beautiful smile even as Sharky grumbles behind her. “You love me too much to arrest me.”

Mattie’s grin grows. “That depends on whether or not you’re planning to share.” Hurk’s eyebrows lift. “It’s not like anybody’ll be able to tell the difference between this and all the bliss we’re constantly breathing anyway.”

“You make a hell of a point, Dep,” Hurk says, and he passes it over.

Mattie doesn’t even pretend not to know what to do.

The three of them sit together on Sharky’s porch, soaking up the sun and the company, gradually breaking apart to raid the stores in his bunker for snacks before coming back together like they belong that way.

Mattie thinks maybe they do.

She tells Hurk more stories that he doesn’t know, like how long it took her to escape John’s bunker, with enough time and the gentle high of the weed to protect her from the insane feelings of hopelessness she felt, the way she thought she’d never see the sun again.

It’s nice to be able to fully relax, to let her guard down and clearly talk about everything that’s happened. It’s nice to have people believe her -- it’s nice to have someone else trust her like Sharky did, even though Hurk was harder to convince.

“I’ve always felt like we’re just trapped in a circle,” Hurk confides, finally, squinting off in the afternoon sun to the other side of Sharky’s property. “Like… we’re just always doin’ the same things over and over, you know? Maybe this has been goin’ on the whole time.”

They mull it over, considering, in silence, as the sun sets just a little more. If it wasn’t for the occasional wafts of bliss pollen on the breeze and the lingering threat of the peggies, it would be a perfectly relaxing afternoon. What could be better than spending quiet time with friends, cuddled up with the man she’s in love with?

She almost ignores it when she hears Faith’s singing. It’s not uncommon to hear her, and really if it wasn’t so goddamn creepy it might be nice, she has a lovely voice. It’s just that the singing is almost immediately followed by actually seeing Faith standing in the middle of Sharky’s yard, halfway between the still-open bunker door and the pile of tires.

Sharky and Hurk don’t react, so Mattie knows it’s just another fucking bliss hallucination. She watches Faith out of the corner of her eyes, trying to listen to Hurk over Faith’s singing.

It’s fucking annoying.

“Hey!” She pushes herself up and out of Sharky’s lap, batting away his grasping hands that are trying to pull her back. The boys laugh as she stumbles a little on legs that have partially gone to sleep, pausing to grab one of the larger pieces of gravel that make up Sharky’s walkway. “Get out of here, you fucking cunt.”

She throws the little rock while the boys laugh behind her. Faith disappears into a shower of sparks and bliss pollen, creating a swirling cloud that grows and coalesces right in front of her. Faith smiles, a wide and beautiful expression that Mattie would have found cute in any other circumstances, and then… 

The boys yell, but Mattie can’t move.

_“Welcome to the bliss.”_

\---

Okay, Faith is _pissed._ Mattie’s not sure exactly what pushed her over the edge -- maybe calling her a cunt? That would be a good guess -- but she’s absolutely furious and Mattie’s caught up in her wrath.

This is something else that makes her feel like a Seed, the ability to tap into that unbridled fury, even tempered as it is by the undercurrent of desperation. That feels like John more than Jacob’s detached calculations or Joseph’s steely anger hidden under manipulations.

Of course… Mattie’s furious too.

She’s never been so angry.

“I don’t understand! Did you think you could just continue to do what you wanted without consequences? I’ve been reasonable, I’ve been fair. You are just so _selfish!”_

If Mattie never sees the inside of a fucking bliss forest again, it’ll be too soon. Faith pushes her and Mattie sails backward and she knows she can’t fight it, so she doesn’t bother. She has to just let Faith scream at her until she gets distracted, then Mattie will be able to fight back.

Maybe this time will be the time she can get in close enough to the real Faith to kill her.

(Although… _how_ has Faith been manipulating people through the bliss like this? How is it even physically possible? It’s almost worth taking her alive just to find that out.)

(Almost.)

“You forced someone to leave that _didn’t want to go.”_ Faith bares her teeth and grabs Mattie’s sleeve. She tugs, and then they’re in the jail instead of the forest, watching Burke and Virgil play cards. Mattie actually smiles a little at this, even though she still really fuckin’ hates Burke.

At least he’s up and walking around, yeah?

“All so you could be, what? A hero? Do you know what ‘hubris’ is? Arrogance before the gods. The Greeks saw it as a dangerous form of pride that invoked the goddess Nemesis who would seek retribution…”

A chill settles over Mattie as Faith’s words settle into something cold, the boiling anger settling into something even more deadly.

She floats around Burke as she speaks, touching his back and shoulders, guiding him to stand, to draw his weapon (why does he even still have that, _holy shit),_ to shoot the screaming Virgil in the center of his chest.

His scream cuts off as he falls, and Mattie tries to rush to his side to help, but…

She’s in the bliss.

This isn’t real.

Right?

_Right?_

Seeing Virgil fall feels _real._ Seeing Burke point his pistol at her _feels real._ Hearing him parrot back Faith’s words feels real too, horrifying in its clarity as they say, “I’m sorry to have to do this. I wanted there to be another way, but you made your choice.”

It’s terrifyingly real to see Burke walk to the jail’s control to open the outside gates to the peggies. It’s terrifyingly real as he turns back to her and says, without Faith’s prompting, “I told you I didn’t want to leave.”

It’s terrifyingly real to see him lift the pistol to his chin and pull the trigger without hesitation, without even acknowledging her screams.

\---

It’s easy enough to ignore Faith's voice in her ear with Whitehorse’s pleas for help getting cut off over the radio, with Tracey’s horrified demands for help taking over. The boys let her drive back to the jail without argument, without really acknowledging the fact that she fell into another bliss hallucination that wasn’t really a hallucination at all.

Sharky doesn’t mention that he held her as she went limp, or that she screamed as she saw what Faith wanted her to see, or that her body had been rocked by a seizure before she pulled out of it. She can feel it in the rawness of her throat, in the pinched muscles still trying to relax, in the Sharky-sized fingerprint bruises on her arms.

He just stays quiet as she tears down the mountain just a hair too fast to be safe, only to slam the car into a skidding stop at the base of the jail’s driveway. 

It’s swarming with peggies.

It’s easy enough to ignore Faith’s voice as the three of them split up, as Mattie sneaks around the back of the jail, killing peggies and angels alike as she goes until she’s able to climb up and over and in. She can hear the screams of peggies suddenly catching on fire echoing through the vents, she can smell the smoke of Sharky’s flamethrower and hear the resonating booms of Hurk’s RAT-4.

It’s easy enough to ignore Faith’s voice until she frees Tracey from the peggies and they find Virgil in his makeshift office, blood all over his face and the floor and the cabinets. He’s not breathing, doesn’t start even as Tracey cradles his body with more tenderness than Mattie expected, checking his pulse as Mattie fruitlessly puts pressure on a wound that’s long stopped bleeding.

It’s not easy to ignore her voice as she croons, _“You tried so hard. Isn’t it sad, knowing it’s all for nothing?”_

She can’t even cry. She doesn’t feel anything as she sits down hard on the floor, jeans already stained with Sharky’s blood soaking up Virgil’s too, painting a damning portrait of her failures. 

It really is all for nothing.

Tracey pulls Virgil’s Cougars pin off his sweater, staring at it as she shakes with sobs. “This is what she does,” Tracey says, and there’s no question about who _she_ is, “takes, destroys.”

There’s a history there, and Mattie doesn’t know the whole story, but she knows, deep, deep down, down in her bones, that Tracey’s right.

She just nods and drags herself to her feet in automatic obedience, Tracey’s words blotting out Faith’s in her mind.

“Find her. Kill her. Don’t let her get away with this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter marks the last one I've written in advance, so it's a race here for me to finish each chapter on schedule. I'll do my best since we're SO CLOSE to the end!
> 
> I may also have played myself because I might need 16 chapters to wrap everything up. Send help.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I updated the chapter count again. Don't @ me.

“ ‘I’ll show you a world you never thought possible,’ she says. ‘Now you see what we can do,’ she says. Fucking bullshit bliss fucking _cunt.”_

At least she’s in control of her own body this time. If she’s going to have to wade through clouds of bliss hallucination, trying to figure out where she really is as she marches down a hill toward a clearing, she should at least be able to swear the whole time she does it.

She hopes Faith can hear her. It would serve her _goddamn_ right.

She squares her shoulders and keeps her eyes peeled for Faith, pistol already clutched in her hands because if there’s _any_ chance she can get the first shot, she’s going to take it.

Faith deserves it for all the times she’s pulled her ass into the bliss.

At least she can walk around all on her own this time. 

Being paralyzed by the bliss is just too goddamn much.

This is… well, it’s not _fine,_ but it’s better at least.

Mattie stops walking when she hears Faith singing “Amazing Grace,” torn between her immediate rejection of Faith’s voice and the beauty of the song. She heaves a deep breath of bliss-scented air and turns to where the song is coming, fully prepared to have to chase her down or suddenly come face-to-face with some sort of ridiculous wild animal.

She’s not prepared to see Whitehorse walking hand-in-hand with Faith.

She’s not prepared to see them stop and kneel down so he can pick a flower.

She’s not prepared for him to ignore her and start singing along with Faith as they walk by almost close enough for Mattie to touch.

She tries to grab for him, tries to pull him out of Faith’s grasp, but Faith slaps her hand away. The impact resonates through Mattie, stinging all the way up her arm, and there’s nothing Mattie would rather do than choke the life out of Faith with her bare fucking hands.

“Your sheriff kept you from walking the Path, but now he understands his purpose! He’ll join our family in Eden.” Faith keeps a death grip on Mattie’s arms as she speaks, holding her in place even as she tries to rip away to chase after Whitehorse. “And if you try to stop him…”

Faith trails off and starts to giggle, spinning around and disappearing into a cloud of bliss and sparks.

“Earl! Earl?” Whitehorse is nowhere to be seen, and he doesn’t respond to her calls, so she stops and stomps her foot in a moment of impotent rage. It reminds her of being a little kid, with the things she wanted dangled in front of her face before being snatched away, and she’s too furious to know what to do about it for just a few seconds before she pulls herself back together.

She has a clear purpose.

Maybe it’s her only purpose.

She walks on, following the obvious path, hoping it takes her to Whitehorse or Faith or somewhere helpful and not over the edge of a cliff and to her death -- not that it matters all that much, not in the scheme of things, but falling to her death is not her prefered way to go these days -- and waits for Faith to show back up.

She does it in a very Faith-like way, playing with Mattie’s senses by blinking in and out of existence, taunting her.

“Your sheriff was a wall,” she says, appearing only long enough to say the words before disappearing again, stopping the bullet that leaves Mattie’s gun from making contact. “A wall between you and the Father. A wall that kept you from seeing his truth.”

The path turns into a clearing, and Faith appears floating in the center of it, a good four feet above the boulder.

This is so goddamn dramatic.

She’s back to acting like John.

Who is she _really?_

Mattie’s so annoyed at Faith saying “I will knock down that wall” that she barely notices the angels that pop up around her. One grabs her by the loose material at the back of her flannel and _tugs,_ and she falls back even as her arms start to flail. 

She fucking hates these things, these people that Faith’s turned into goddamn zombies. The one holding her can’t even remember how to fight her properly; it just bites at the air and tries to dig its nails into her shirt like it can hurt her that way.

It falls fast with a bullet through its head, and Mattie’s able to turn her attention to the other before it gets close enough to bite her. She slams the grip of her gun into its forehead instead, over and over, until hard bone gives way to something wet and soft, and she has to pull herself away and look for Faith before she begins to gag.

Something about this feels too real, much more real than every other time she’s been in Faith’s clutches. Despite the bliss, the angels are _real_ under her hands, and even as they fall, they don’t change. They don’t turn into Cougars, or to the other deputies, or to Whitetails, or to anyone Mattie wouldn’t want to hurt. 

They stay as they are, lost to Faith’s poison and Joseph’s beliefs.

Faith keeps talking even as more and more angels throw themselves in front of Mattie’s Wrath. She tries to tune her out, but… it’s hard.

_Your sheriff is so close now, so close to accepting the word of the Father into his heart._

Another angel falls in front of Mattie, a bullet in its shoulder, then it climbs back to its feet with blood dripping down its chin.

_And when he does… there’s no coming back from that._

She shoots it again, and this time it stays down, but there are more, there are always more, pouring out of the fog surrounding her and screaming with every ounce of strength left in their empty bodies. 

_Don’t fear death. I’ll make it quick._

If Mattie had enough breath left in her lungs to laugh, she would. Faith has no fucking idea. The only people in this world who know are Sharky and Hurk -- Jacob knew before he died, just for the last few seconds lived with the knowledge that she couldn’t be stopped, but Faith? Joseph?

They’re both living under the assumption they’ll _win_ this.

They won’t.

_You could’ve joined us._

She empties her last clip into an angel’s chest, and ends up throwing her pistol at the next one. She doesn’t have time to switch to another weapon before it’s on her, and she has to fight back with fists and nails to keep it from tearing out her throat.

That’s one way she never wants to experience.

 _Why do you keep fighting us? You know what’s coming, the Father showed you! The world is_ crashing _to an end; it is diseased and corrupt. The Father is offering you a chance to let go, to stop worrying, to be free!_

There are a half dozen angels running around and about the same number of Faiths floating in the air and Mattie’s fucking had it.

_Sinner…_

She takes a rake off one angel before it’s able to put the pointed end in her face and starts swinging it around like a bat. The metal end makes solid contact with the next two angels, knocking them down long enough for Mattie to stomp on their throats.

She’s going to have nightmares about this for the rest of her life.

_Traitor…_

The handle snaps, and she picks it up again, swinging from closer this time. 

She won’t stop. 

She can’t.

Apparently Faith’s had it too. The copies of Faith disappear and only one is left, screaming as Mattie finally kills the last angel summoned to stop her.

“You’ll never know what I know!” Faith screams, voice sounding more solid now that it’s coming from one place. She’s still floating, and Mattie grips the broken rake in both hands like she can make Faith come back to earth through sheer force of will.

“You don’t know what he’ll do! Live by the sword and you will _die_ by the sword.”

Is that directed at Mattie, or at Faith? They’ve both been living by the sword, and Faith proves it by sending a concentrated ball of bliss at Mattie’s chest. It explodes in a shower of sparks that takes away her breath for a second, but doesn’t do much more than make her even more furious.

She throws the rake.

“You throw away my offer?” Faith dodges the rake. Bitch. “He is more powerful than you know!”

Mattie dodges another ball of bliss, picks up a rock and throws it back. “Would you come down here and fight me like a human fucking person?”

Faith bares her teeth to Mattie, floating higher if anything at all. “It’s not my fault! None of this was my fault! You think I wanted this? He plied me with drugs, he threatened me! I was seventeen, I was just a child.”

Mattie hesitates.

If that’s true…

Faith lies and manipulates and plays with the truth until Mattie literally can’t tell up from down, but something about this admission strikes too close to home.

Another bliss ball strikes her chest, and she falls onto her ass.

“You strike, but you cannot destroy what he created.”

Maybe it’s true, but maybe it _doesn’t fucking matter_ at this point.

“The Father sees what you do, and he will remember!”

Well. Mattie’s going to kill him next.

Now that she’s sitting, even woozy and exhausted and breathless, she has the opportunity to grab for her AR-C, still on her back. She pulls it forward and switches off the safety, pointing it up at Faith.

“Please be real,” she murmurs, and then she pulls the trigger. 

The bullets hit their mark and Faith explodes into the familiar shower of sparks, and for half a second Mattie’s afraid she’s just been duped _again_ and she’s going to have to do this _again_ and that she’ll never truly be able to kill Faith. She stands up, vibrating with fury… 

But then…

But then…

“You still don’t understand.” Faith is in front of her, white dress stained bright with blood. It drips from a cut on her forehead and from her lips, and she wobbles, hands pressed to wounds Mattie can’t see but she knows are her fault. “You don’t know what it is you’re doing, do you? Joseph believes he’s our savior, but _you’ll_ be the one who decides what happens. You were the start… you’ll be the end.”

Faith reaches for Mattie, and Mattie steps back, steps away from her grasping hand, dripping with damning blood. The stain on the front of Faith’s dress grows, and her breath hitches on a sob.

She nods anyway. “It was always going to happen this way. You’ll walk the path, you’ll rescue your sheriff, you will be… a hero.” She falls, landing hard on her knees in the bloody grass. Mattie kneels too, leaning forward like she can help, like she _wants_ to help. That habit is hard to break, and Mattie’s gut twists as Faith looks up with glass eyes. “And then? You’ll choose. And if you don’t listen to him, he’ll be right.”

She falls then, forward into Mattie’s arms, and she stains the front of her clothes with blood to match the stains from Sharky and Virgil. She doesn’t take another breath. She doesn’t say another word for Joseph or against Mattie.

She’s just… she’s gone.

The haze of bliss falls, and Mattie recognizes where she is, back where this day started, near the Misery. She can still smell the bliss in the air, but it’s not hiding anything anymore. She can see Faith’s body, she can see the open gates leading into another bunker, and she can see the dead bodies of countless angels around her.

She’s finally here. She’s finally done it.

But Whitehorse? Whitehorse is still gone.

She doesn’t bother to radio anyone to let them know where she is, she doesn’t want to alert Joseph or the rest of the peggies to what she’s about to do. 

This is the kind of job it’s better to work alone, and so she does, taking half a second to lay Faith on her back and rest her arms on her stomach before shouldering her rifle and heading inside.

She can do this. She can do this.

She can do it.

\---

She can’t do this.

The inside of Faith’s bunker is choked with bliss, more than she’s ever seen in any one place, even at the water treatment plant. Each and every breath she takes makes bile rise in her throat just as surely as it makes the sparks shine around her and in front of her. If she turns a corner too fast, she can see the inside of the Grandview again, she can hear Jacob’s voice in her ear like he never left, she can hear the screams of Whitetails falling under her hands.

She presses herself into a corner and closes her eyes, squeezing them tight and holding her breath until the lightheadedness has nothing to do with the bliss surrounding her. 

When she opens them again, she can still see the plants that fill the lowest level of Faith’s bunker, but they’re less wobbly, less like the inside of the Grandview and more like someone pulled in a bunch of potted plants to make sure she’d hallucinate what she was supposed to hallucinate.

Okay.

Okay.

She moves deeper into the bunker, moving as quietly as she can, barely trusting anything she sees. Is it full of people, or empty? Is grass growing out of the floor, or is it covered in green carpet? 

How is she going to get out of here when she can’t even trust the ground under her feet?

It takes her far too long to find Earl, trapped in one of Faith’s cells, eyes already starting to turn angel-white but in enough control of himself to know he’d rather die now than fall into her clutches.

He tells her to hurry, so she does. He tells her to stop the bliss production, to stop it from polluting both his cell and the county in general, so… she does.

She will.

She fights her way up and up and up, killing angels that aren’t there and rescuing an imaginary Tracey before finally finding clearer air to breathe. It still stinks like bliss and sweat and too many human bodies packed into a room with poor ventilation, but the sparks recede and her nausea is more a product of lingering pain and exhaustion than the anxiety of memories.

She dies trying to close the valves to the bliss tanks. She dies with a peggie’s hands around her throat and his blood in her mouth. She dies with her head pushed into the liquid underneath the platforms. She dies with a ricocheted bullet in her throat, and she dies with the concussion of an explosion ringing in her ears.

She dies, and she dies, and she dies again, until she’s so desperate to continue that she would do literally anything the _black white black_ asked her to do, and then…

The last peggie falls under her hands, the last vent is shut off, and she sits down hard on the metal steps and gasps back her tears as Whitehorse calls in over her radio to tell her he’s out of his cell and heading outside, with just one last order:

_“Blow this place into oblivion.”_

He’s out. He’s safe.

She saved him.

Her next stop inside Faith’s bunker is the central pumps, the heart of the bliss operation, and she heads in what she hopes is the right direction with the sort of single-minded determination that led her out of Idaho in the first place.

She dodges leaking bliss pipes and bullets and baseball bats alike, moving forward with the confidence of someone who knows their fuck-ups will be erased by an absolutely hellish twist of fate.

(She dies again, twice, and she doesn’t bother quieting her screams when the explosion from the pump burns straight through her flannel and into the skin of her shoulder. It fucking hurts, and if she can erase this pain by starting over she will, and then at least she won’t have another scar to live with.)

(It’s the one time no peggies come at the noise she makes.)

(She moves on.)

She can barely hear Whitehorse telling her to meet him and the other survivors outside over the blasting evacuation warning, like the smoke and leaking bliss fumes on the upper level aren’t enough to warn any remaining peggies that this bunker is too far gone to be saved, but Whitehorse is right. It _does_ feel like the whole place is about to blow, and she picks up the pace as much as she can.

She’s not totally certain what will happen to her if she literally _explodes._

She supports her injured arm with her good one and runs and climbs and runs and climbs, and she keeps going even as more peggies come at her instead of running too.

She’s not a monster, no matter what they think.

She would have let them go if they weren’t shooting first.

She skids out into the open air and nearly topples over a railing in her surprise. Night fell at some point while she was struggling inside, even though she’d walked in the bottommost level in the middle of the afternoon, and she doesn’t know how to get done from here.

She picks a direction and runs, spinning to her left and hoping against hope to feel solid ground under her feet again before the explosion knocks her down sixty feet to the valley floor.

There are too few feet between her and the top of the silo when it finally gives in to the internal pressures and explodes, sending out a shockwave that knocks her forward off her feet so that she lands face-down in the dirt with her ears ringing.

Enough adrenaline is flowing through her that she pushes herself up onto her elbows before she remembers her burn, and then she just presses her forehead into the cold grass and screams and screams and _screams._

This fucking _hurts._ It hurts her arm and it hurts her head and it hurts her heart, and she just wants to be _fucking done._

As soon as she needs to take a breath, she pushes herself upright. She sucks in bliss-free oxygen for what feels like the first time in weeks and sits back on her heels and stares up at the moon as she waits for her hearing to start coming back. 

She wipes the dirt off her face while she waits, then climbs to her feet, and heads around the long way to the bottom of the bunker.

Whitehorse is waiting for her when she finally makes it down. He’s leaning against a low wall, his eyes clear, and he frowns when he sees her limping on a sore ankle that somehow developed as she made her way down the hill.

“Everyone else go back to the jail?”

His mustache twitches as he smiles. “They were ready to get the celebration started. You okay?”

She shrugs her good shoulder. “I’ve been worse.”

He nods and studies her for a moment. His eyes are clear, the shadows under them deep. “You know,” he finally says, speaking carefully. “There was a moment, just before you arrived…” He draws in a deep breath and lets it out again. “I’d just lost all hope. Couldn’t see a way out. You led the way. A lot of good people died, but everyone here, all of us are alive because of _you._ And I’m damn proud of you.”

Mattie ducks her head to hide the tears that spring to her eyes at his words, but she doesn’t fool him for a second, not after everything he’s seen. He reaches out and pulls her against his chest in a hug too tight for her injuries, but she clutches him back with all the strength she has.

This? This makes it all worth it.

She pulls away and wipes her cheeks again, and this time they come away muddy so she knows she looks absolutely ridiculous, but Whitehorse only gives her a fond little smile before his expression starts to harden into one she recognizes from work.

“And now I want you to find that goddamn Joseph Seed and bring him to justice, or, or put him in the ground.” Mattie lifts her eyes when Whitehorse stammers over his words not out of uncertainty but out of apparent anger. “And that’s an order.”

She chokes back a hysterical laugh and tries to nod at him with the same sense of solemnity he’s offering her. “Yes, sir.”

He studies her for another second, then nods back at her. “You coming back with me, or heading up to see that Boshaw boy?”

She does laugh this time, but it’s not hysterical. He just sounds so disapproving. “I’ll head up to see him. I need to rest before I can do anything else.”

“Okay,” he grumbles, then turns a little to face where the paved road is hiding around the curved dirt path. “C’mon, _Deputy._ They’ve left us a couple cars by the road. You’ve earned a break.”

She’s not going to argue with that.

\---

Sharky’s waiting for her when she pulls up to his trailer, sitting on his front porch with a beer in his hand and a grim expression on his face that almost completely disappears when he sees Mattie climb out of the borrowed car. 

He puts the can on the floor and stands up when she makes it up next to him, silent for once, and he cups her face in his big hands. She lets him, watching his expression change as he takes in the new cuts and bruises and things she _knows_ he’s blaming himself for.

When he’s finally finished his inspection, he leans down and brushes his lips against hers with so much tenderness she can’t help the little sob that catches in her chest and makes her breath hitch. He kisses her again when he hears it, thumbs tracing over her cheeks as he does.

“You dislocate your shoulder again?”

She shakes her head and then presses a quick kiss to his palm before she answers. “Burned. Help me?”

“You don’t even have to ask. C’mon.” He takes her hand and pulls her inside, making sure the door doesn’t bounce back and hit her on their way in. 

She sits where he tells her, settling on the counter and waiting as he fishes a surprisingly clean first aid kit from one of the cabinets.

Well, maybe she shouldn’t be surprised. Burns are his area of expertise, after all.

“How many times did you die this time?” He doesn’t look at her as he speaks, keeping all his focus on her arm as he unbuttons her flannel. She wants to answer his question, but it fucking hurts as he pulls the material away from her burn, hurts like it did when her arm was on fire, and she whines through gritted teeth instead. “Talk to me, shorty. Keep your mind off it.”

She squeezes her eyes closed so she can’t see and tries to ignore the queasy feeling in her stomach. “A lot. The bliss was… it was a lot.”

Sharky’s hands disappear and she opens one eye to see where he’s going. He turns back to her with a pair of scissors, and for half a second she’s terrified he’s going to use them on her burn. Instead, he cuts the material of her tank top so she won’t have to pull it up over her head.

“So like… seven times?” 

The rest of her tank top falls.

“Dunno. Lost count. Probably like…” she tries to remember, but the bliss makes everything run together. “Nine?”

Sharky kisses her forehead as he reaches around her to unhook her bra. 

“Are you up to like… fifty now? Sorry, sorry, sorry…”

He eases the strap over the burn and down, and she opens her eyes to stare at him as she sits naked from the waist up. He’s not even looking at her chest, eyes firmly on her boots he’s now trying to untie. 

“Yeah. I’ll have to update the tally.”

He’s silent until her boots hit the linoleum, then still as her socks follow.

When he finally looks up at her, his forehead is pinched and his eyes dark, but he smiles all the same. “It’s easier to clean up in the shower.”

He pulls her off the counter and helps her step out of her jeans, then tugs her behind him to the tiny bathroom. It’s not the cleanest she’s ever seen, but the water comes on when he twists the handle, and she waits as he adjusts the temperature just right before she steps in.

It’s cold.

“Sorry,” he says again, voice low as he apologizes and starts shucking off his own clothes. “Hot water will just make it worse.”

She stands under the stream and shivers, not answering, and just waits as he crams into the stall behind her.

He washes her with gentle hands and products that smell like him, and he makes soft shushing noises when she starts to cry from some combination of pain and exhaustion and the overwhelming feeling of being _home._

For the first time in her life, she’s home.

She keeps crying, just soft gasping breaths and slow tears she can’t control, as he dries her off and wrings out her hair with a towel. She keeps crying as he dries the burn with gauze and then bandages it with his tongue caught between his teeth in concentration. She keeps crying as he ushers her into his bed and then curls up around her so he can hold her without hurting her shoulder even once more.

He keeps pressing feather-light kisses against her cheek and jaw and forehead, smoothing her hair and squeezing her fingers and unable to keep still or stop from touching her. She loves it, leans into it and lets it soothe her until the tears finally dry and her breath finally evens out and she can just… be.

“I love you,” she says, and she means it, means _I love you_ and _thank you_ and _I don’t know what I would do without you_ and a hundred other things she doesn’t know how to say.

He squeezes her waist and presses himself as close as he can. “I love you,” he says, and she thinks she can hear his unspokens too. “You’re amazing.”

She doesn’t have the energy to laugh, so she just lets out a tired chuckle. “I’m not special.”

He squeezes her again, and she doesn’t let him know it hurts her ribs when he does. “You’re fuckin’ amazing, Mat. You’re badass, you kick ass, and you’re the coolest chick, uhh, girl — no, woman, shit, sorry — that I know.” She giggles, unable to help it, and when he starts talking again she can hear the smile in his voice. “I don’t know anybody else who could do what you’ve been doin’.”

She’s going to cry again. Instead, she turns her head and captures his lips with hers. She can taste the compliments still on his tongue, and they warm her from the inside out. It lingers, soft and slow, and then he pulls away just enough to rest his head back on the pillow.

“We match now.”

“Hmm?” Sharky’s response is little more than a grumble, but he opens one eye and peers back at her.

She grins. “We’ll have matching burn scars.”

He smiles back, soft and beautiful in the lamplight. “Now I just need me one of them sin tattoos and we’d be identical.” His smile grows as she giggles. “Too bad someone murdered the only artist in the county.”

She snickers. “Too bad. Hope the police do somethin’ about it.”

“Their best deputy seems pretty distracted these days. Not sure they’ll be able to catch ‘em.”

She leans in and kisses him again, a little harder this time, laughter still bubbling just under the surface. She ignores her shoulder and nips at his bottom lip to hear him growl at her. He does, the props himself up on one elbow so he can lean over her and kiss her properly,

She clutches at his back with her good arm and moans. She can’t help it. She missed him, and she needs him, and that feeling of _home_ and _safety_ only grows as he moves closer and settles between her thighs.

They kiss for a long time, taking advantage of the quiet and the peace that comes from having almost all the Seeds dead and out of the way. Sharky’s gentle, careful not to cause her more pain than she’s asking for, leaving kisses over her face and throat and hickeys across her chest. She gives almost as good as she gets, content for the most part to let Sharky take control for once, lying under him until she just can’t take it anymore.

“Sharky, baby, please.” She hitches one of her legs up higher around his waist, pulling him against her. He moans against her throat, open-mouthed and desperate, and she can feel him so, so hard against her hip. “Stop making me wait.”

He kisses her lips once more, lingering, and then rests his forehead against hers as she tangles the fingers of her good arm in his hair. “You sure? I don’t wanna hurt—”

 _“Yes.”_ She cuts him off, pulls his hair just a little because she knows he likes it, and she’s rewarded with a full-body shiver. “Put on a condom and quit teasing me.”

He kisses her again, faster this time, and mutters a half-teasing _yes ma’am_ against her lips. He sits up, careful not to jostle her, and she watches with parted lips and sharp eyes as he pulls a condom from somewhere under his bed, opens it, and rolls it on.

He’s so, so careful as he moves back over her, propping himself up with one elbow as he guides himself against her and then inside of her in one smooth, slow glide. He kisses her as he hilts himself, and she moans his name against his lips.

It’s beautiful and it’s slow and it’s inexorable, the feeling of Sharky loving her with the entirety of his being. It consumes her and fills her, and she can’t stop the slow leak of tears that Sharky kisses away with so much tenderness.

She loves him. She feels it with each press of his lips to her heated skin and with each thrust of his hips against hers. She feels it with each beat of her heart and with each breath she takes. 

It’s selfish, and she knows it, but it feels like everything that’s happened was worth it, because she’s _here._ She’s with him.

“You’re so wet.” Sharky speaks directly into her ear, lips tickling her, and she shivers and clenches around him at the feeling. He moans again and starts thrusting into her a little harder as he begins talking again, unable to help himself. “Oh, my god.” Another thrust, another uncontrollable moan. “Fuckin’... amazing. I love you.”

Her delighted laugh turns into a moan as he hits her just right, the pain in her shoulder receding as the pleasure grows. “Yeah. Yeah, baby, it’s never — _oh, god_ — never felt like this before. Never.”

His response is lost in a moan pressed against the side of her neck, but she knows he’s getting closer because his hips stutter in their rhythm and he forgets to be so gentle. 

She sneaks her good arm between them and presses her fingers to her clit, matching Sharky’s thrusts as best she can. Sharky adjusts his weight and tangles the fingers of one hand into her still-wet hair, holding her still as he kisses her hard. His rhythm stutters again as she slides her tongue along his, then again when she clenches around him as she grows closer to her end.

“Mattie, Mat, please. Please, I can’t—oh, fuck.”

She comes with his voice in her ear, filled and surrounded by him, pure delight making her laugh as she does. Sharky follows not half a second later, biting at her collarbone and shivering all over as he comes.

“Fuck, that was good.” Mattie’s still laughing, unable to stop herself, relaxed and loose and happy in a way she hasn’t been since their last morning in Fall’s End together.

Sharky carefully pulls away, breath still coming heavy, to tie off the condom and drop it in what she hopes is a trash can but thinks is really just a pile of homeless garbage. As soon as he does, he flops back down on the mattress next to her and lets out a breathless laugh of his own before curling back against her side.

“Feel better?”

She closes her eyes and stretches out her still-shaking legs, flexing her toes before relaxing again. “You always know how to make me feel better, Sharky.”

He makes a happy grumbling noise under his breath, but anything he’s going to say is drowned out by the sound of her radio squawking to life in the kitchen. 

She bats his hands away and slips free of the bed, wobbling her way to the kitchen with her bad arm tucked against her side. 

She recognizes Joseph’s voice before she understands what he’s saying, and she brings the radio back to the room where Sharky’s stretched out across the bed on his stomach with his head pillowed on his arms.

_“You took my family from me so that I could have yours.”_

Sharky wrinkles his nose but doesn’t move otherwise, and Mattie admires the muscles of his back as she listens to Joseph’s watery voice.

_“We will welcome them with open arms... just as we will welcome you. We will be waiting for you where it all began.”_

The radio clicks off as he ends his transmission, and silence fills the room.

“The fuck does that mean?” Mattie wonders, but Sharky doesn’t have time to say anything before Dutch is coming over the radio.

_“Listen up, Deputy. I’m thinkin’ we’ve reached the end of the line. Time to cowboy up and deal with Joseph Seed once and for all. He’s waiting for you at his church.”_

The radio clicks as Dutch signs off, and Mattie clicks it all the way off as Sharky opens his eyes to look up at her. He’s quiet, but the question is clear.

She shakes her head at him. “Joseph can wait. I’m not doing one more goddamn thing today.”

His face breaks out in a wide smile at her words, then he jumps and starts to laugh as she gives his ass a gentle swat on her way back down onto the mattress.

“Cuddle me. I’m going to sleep.”

He’s still laughing as he pulls the blanket up over them and cuddles against her side just like he had before she pulled him over into her space. 

“Yes ma’am.”

She closes her eyes and tries to memorize everything about the moment. How it feels to have Sharky holding her, how warm he is, the way he smells like soap and sweat, how _safe_ it feels to have him curled around her.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, shorty.”

It feels like the last time she’ll get to say it.


	15. Chapter 15

Mattie slips out of Sharky’s bed just before dawn and gets dressed in the gray light of his kitchen. It doesn’t feel like a real day, not yet. It feels like something different, too still and quiet, and it feels like if she says anything out loud, even goodbye to Sharky, the spell will break.

He’s going to be furious that she’s doing this again, but she can’t help it. She can’t make herself put him in front of Joseph.

Whatever’s happening, whatever has been bringing her back time and again, this _black white black_ that has been tormenting her since she stepped foot on Joseph’s compound for the first time however many weeks ago… it’s between her and Joseph.

She can’t bring anyone with her.

Whatever’s happening is going to end _today._

She pulls her burned flannel back on and tiptoes outside, and she drives until she can’t see his trailer behind her before she turns her headlights on.

He’s going to be furious.

But he’s going to _live._

And right now, that’s all she can give him.

She keeps the radio off and the windows cracked as she drives well below the speed limit to Joseph’s compound. Her burn doesn’t hurt as much as it did before she fell asleep, healing faster than she would have expected, like the rest of her wounds have, like the bullet wound she got escaping John’s bunker that went away after a few days, or the broken ribs from Jacob that disappeared too, but it still puts out a lot of heat that makes the rest of her feel colder.

She can’t stop shivering.

The sun is up by the time she makes it to the little island, the clock on the car’s radio reading a confusing 3:52, and with her smartphone long since destroyed, she’ll probably never know what time this really happened.

She follows the drive as it moves from public road to private lane, the only indication she’s changed locations the sudden privacy fence that borders the road on both sides. There’s only one way forward now, and she follows it with a growing sense of dread that literally makes the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stand on end.

It feels almost like the first time they came here, the sense of building dread and wrongness getting higher and higher the closer and closer she gets to Joseph. It feels like she shouldn’t be here, but with something undercutting that too.

The _black white black_ and the bone-deep knowledge that she’s the only one who can be.

The drive takes her past the front entrance, the one she walked through a hundred lifetimes ago, and to the side, where she parks next to abandoned cars and crates of supplies. She parks, leaves the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked, and tucks her hands into her pockets as she strolls through an open-sided tent that used to house a dozen or so peggies.

It’s completely abandoned, mattresses bare, a pair of boots abandoned on the ground. A note from Joseph tells them to leave and go into the county, that everything is theirs for the taking, and she reads it three times before gently putting it back where she found it.

There’s no point in getting upset about it now.

What’s done is done. She can’t help that a fucking _memo_ put all the citizens in Hope County at greater risk than they had been before. She can’t help that she was part of what plunged this county into chaos.

All she can do is try to put it right.

There’s no one in the church’s courtyard when she steps out into it. The yard is deadly silent and, she suspects, completely abandoned. 

She and Joseph are probably the only ones here for miles around.

That thought shouldn’t make her grin in anticipation… but it does.

She keeps her hands tucked in her pockets as she approaches the church doors, and isn’t particularly surprised to see the open bliss barrels on either side of them, or to see the doors thrown open as Joseph walks outside to greet her.

She’s not surprised that he’s not wearing a shirt again, but she is kind of annoyed by it.

What a douchebag.

He only looks at her for a moment before gazing up at the sky. She keeps her eyes on him, watching the rosary sway with his movements. It looks like he just has the one pistol on his hip, matching hers, but she doesn’t know what else he has behind his back.

“And the Lamb broke the fifth seal, and I saw under the altar the souls of the Martyrs, slain because of the Word of God.” He looks at her, finally, and points directly at her. She keeps her hands in her pockets and lifts one eyebrow. “You made martyrs of my family, and I am prepared to do the same to yours.”

Hers? Her family is in bum-fuck Idaho, hours away, and she hasn’t seen them in literally years. Why--

Joseph pushes past her, and she turns to keep an eye on him, and that’s when she sees.

That’s when she _fucking sees._

Whitehorse, Joey, and Staci are all bound with their hands behind their backs, pushed forward by the people Mattie’s been fighting beside this whole goddamn time.

Her pistol’s in her hand before she has time to think about it, before she has time to think about whether or not it’s a good idea to draw first, but then… she freezes. There’s too many of them, and they have hostages.

At least Sharky’s safe.

Joseph turns back to her, standing between her _and her family,_ and something about his face looks pleased even though he’s not smiling. “God is watching us. And he will judge us on what we choose in this moment.”

Mattie licks her lips and stares hard at Joseph, frozen in place. Up until now, she’s made it through by _pushing through,_ by just steamrolling her way through almost every situation. But here? Now? She can’t move fast enough with a single pistol to get out of here in one piece.

He moves closer, slow measured steps that are meant to frighten her with his calmness. “I told you that we were living in a world on the brink,” he says, stopping just a hair too close. “Where every slight, every injustice, where every choice reveals our _sins._ And where have those sins led us? Where have those sins led you? Your friends have been taken and tortured and it’s _your fault._ Countless people have been killed and it is _your fault._ The world is on fire and it’s _your fault._ Was it worth it? Was it?”

She swallows hard and refuses to let herself lean away even as he takes another step closer. She tightens her grip on her gun, staring into his eyes, tongue caught between her teeth, mind moving a mile a minute. What can she do?

What can she _do?_

“When are you gonna realize that every problem cannot be solved with a bullet? When you first came here, I gave you the choice to walk away.” He moves around her as he speaks, drawing her attention around until she’s facing the open doors of his church again. He stares at her, eyes sad, lips turned down at the corners, and says words she never thought she’d hear from him again. “You chose not to. In the face of God, I am making you that offer one last time. Put down your guns, and you take your friends. You leave me my _flock,_ and you go in peace.” 

His anger shines through as he makes his offer.

He doesn’t want to do this.

He wants to put her down as much as she wants to put him down.

He grits his teeth and he points at her, and she bites her tongue hard enough for the bright taste of blood to bloom in her mouth again.

“Go in peace?” Joey’s voice draws them both, and she turns to look at her friend even though she knows she should keep her eyes on Joseph. “You’re fucking insane.” Joey’s struggling against her bonds, moving restlessly as she glares past Mattie at Joseph.

“Is he?” Staci’s voice is hoarse, raw, and Mattie’s suddenly keenly aware he must have been screaming before he was brought here. _What happened to Jude?_ “We never should have been here in the first place.” He turns his pleading eyes to Mattie and her heart breaks all over again.

He shouldn’t have to be put through this.

Mattie looks at Whitehorse. This shouldn’t be her decision. It shouldn’t have been her responsibility to arrest Joseph in the first place, and it shouldn’t have been her responsibility to free her friends, and this shouldn’t be her responsibility now.

What fucking twist of fate has brought everything down to _this_ moment?

“You know what to do, Rook.”

Fuck, that’s not helpful.

She turns back around to Joseph, who walks right up to her and spreads his arms so she can read each and every tattoo covering him. He looks up, at the clearest blue sky she’s ever seen, then back at her.

“God is watching.”

_Fuck God._

Mattie takes a deep breath.

And then another.

And then she nods.

She’ll take the deal.

Joseph closes his eyes and takes a deep breath too, then he spreads his arms again. “Judge not,” he says, looking at the sky, “and you will not be judged.” He takes Mattie’s biceps in his hands, squeezing just this side of too hard, and leans so close into her space she could bite his nose off. “Condemn not and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.”

He pulls her in and touches his forehead to hers, and she bites her tongue even harder to keep from snarling.

“Take your friends, my child, and go.”

He releases her, and she turns to see her friends getting up too, released from their bonds by the others Joseph’s controlling. Wheaty and Jerome walk past her to Joseph, close enough that she can smell the bliss rolling off them in waves, and her stomach twists. 

She’s going to get them help.

This is the best way.

She would do anything to keep them safe, even passing off Joseph’s fate into the hands of the National Guard.

Whitehorse struggles to his feet, sore from his mistreatment. “Rook? Let’s go.”

He’s back to calling her Rook now. She doesn’t care for it.

“What? What are you doing?” Joey grabs her as she tries to walk past, eyes wide and wild. “Rook? Sheriff?”

“Get in the truck.” Whitehorse isn’t looking back at them. Staci’s shoulders are hunched, his head bowed, she’s sure if she could see his hands she’d see nails bitten raw. 

“I’m not leaving.” Joey’s mad, so fucking mad, so mad she’s forgotten who signs her paychecks. 

Staci’s already climbing in the backseat.

“Hudson, get in the truck.”

“You’ve lost your fucking mind!”

Joey walks right up on Whitehorse, and she’s not prepared for him to turn and yell, right in her face and at full volume, “Get in the _goddamn_ truck!” She leans back and stares at him, eyes wide, and doesn’t say anything else. “Sometimes it’s best to just leave well enough alone.”

Yeah.

Yeah, sometimes that’s _fucking better._

Joey gets in behind Whitehorse, and Mattie climbs in the passenger seat in front of Staci. She wants to reach back and take his hand, but she sits facing forward and stares at Joseph as he surrounds himself with the rest of the Resistance members, all under the influence of the bliss.

Who is going to protect _them?_

Joey manages to stay silent until they’re back on the paved road that leads off the island. 

“Sir,” she says, leaning forward between the two front seats, “with all due respect… what the fuck? We can’t just leave those people…”

Whitehorse cuts her off with the same soft voice he used whenever Mattie was crying in his arms. “We’re not leaving those people,” he says, and Mattie can feel her whole body relaxing. They’re on the same page. “We’re going to Missoula. We’re gonna get the National Guard, and we’re gonna bring the hammer down on that goddamn place.”

He glances over at Mattie, and she smiles as she nods back at him.

That’s exactly what she wanted.

The National Guard can go in and fix it, and she can stay far, far away from anything that would send her back into the _black white black_ again.

This is the ending she was after.

“No.” Staci’s rasp from the backseat has her tensing again, and she turns around to stare at him. She reaches a hand out and he doesn’t even acknowledge it, too twisted in around himself to accept any sort of comfort from her. “No way. I’m not gonna be a part of this. You heard what he said.”

Whitehorse doesn’t have time for this either. He looks back over his shoulder and says, “You’re gonna do exactly as you’re told, Pratt.”

He glances at Mattie as he turns to face the right way again, and he smiles at her for half a second before looking at the road and turning the radio on.

She relaxes back into her seat as the last few notes of a song filter through the peggie truck’s speakers, smiling to herself because she can’t help it.

They’re finally free.

They’re going to be safe.

They’re going to get _help._

The first notes of the next song are like a knife to the gut. They feel exactly the same -- the pain, the twisting sensation, the absolute knowledge that she’s _going_ to die.

_“Only you…”_

Staci screams from the back seat.

Whitehorse looks over his shoulder at him, then at Mattie.

_“…can make this world seem right…”_

She doesn’t know what she looks like. All she knows is she’s starting to see red around the edges of her vision, that sparks are obscuring Whitehorse’s face, that she can’t hear Staci’s screaming anymore as the song gets louder and louder and louder.

_“Only you… can make the darkness bright…”_

All she sees is darkness. All she can hear is the song. All she can feel is the recoil of her pistol as she empties the clip. All she knows is what she was made to do.

Train.

Hunt.

Kill.

_Sacrifice._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_Black._

_White._

_Black._

Don’t make me do it again.

I can’t do it again.

Let me go.

Please, please, let me go.

I’ll do anything else you want, but I can’t do it again. I can’t. I don’t know how.

_White._

_Black._

_Red._

_You have to do it again._

_Do it better._

_Choose better._

_Black._

_White._

I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

Why?

Why me?

_You were chosen as he was chosen._

_Do better._

_Red. Black. White._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She’s still staring at Joseph, who’s still standing too close to her with his arms spread so she can read each and every tattoo covering him. He looks up, at the clearest blue sky she’s ever seen, then back at her.

“God is watching.”

Tears are rolling down her cheeks, unchecked, her gun loose in her hands.

Joseph blinks at her, but doesn’t react otherwise, just the briefest hint of confusion on his usually reserved face.

Why

why

why is she doing this again?

Why won’t the voice let her rest?

She sucks in a deep, deep breath, so deep it makes her feel sick, and as her head spins once she thinks she’s going to throw up right in Joseph’s face but she doesn’t, she pulls it back together, she holds it down.

The voice.

Is this the same voice he hears?

Is he on his own time loop? Has he been looping through his own future options all these years, all these years that the cult has been operating? Did the voice that told her to _do better_ tell him to move to Montana?

How can she call him crazy when the same thing is happening to her?

She takes another breath, in through her nose and out through her mouth.

Her options are to walk away with her family or fight back.

She walked away before.

She’s supposed to choose better, to do better.

That means… she’ll have to fight.

She shakes her head at him, squares her shoulders, corrects her grip on her gun.

And she shakes her head again.

Joseph takes a deep breath, lowers his chin, and growls through gritted teeth at her. “Every slight, every injustice, and every choice reveals our _sin._ John was wrong. Your sin is not Wrath. You would rather watch the world suffer and burn than swallow your _Pride.”_

John was wrong. Joseph’s wrong too.

Her sin was never Wrath or Pride. 

It was always Envy. She was envious of kids who got to go to school, envious of kids who got to keep their mothers, envious of kids whose fathers loved them, envious of kids whose family didn’t turn on them. She was envious of the people who didn’t have to fight against the cult, and now she’s envious of people who don’t have to hear the Voice.

It’s not Pride.

Joseph’s is Pride.

“And the lamb broke the sixth seal and lo, there was a great earthquake!”

Oh, okay. She wasn’t expecting the ground to literally shake when he did that?

That’s… fucking new.

“And the sun became _black,”_ he turns and knocks one bliss barrel over, spilling its contents over the ground so that the fog curls at her feet. She takes a step back, raising her gun, but she falls before she can shoot as he knocks the second barrel over and keeps yelling, “And the moon turned to _blood.”_

The air goes completely black, then green, then the sun comes back through the fog of bliss. 

Fucking bliss.

“Your friends now see the truth!” She can hear Joseph but not see him, and she forces herself to her feet as he continues to scream. “They welcome Eden’s Gate into their hearts! They will die for me!”

She doesn’t know what to do, so she just tilts her chin up and screams, _“Fuck you!”_ as loud as she can.

It gives Staci the opportunity he needs to shoot her in the arm.

She screams and ducks behind the nearest cover, a pallet of bags holding who-knows-what. Sparks dance around her as blood pours from her wound, and she curses whoever taught Staci to aim.

If he’s going to shoot her, he should at least do it _right_ so she can start over and not fucking bleed everywhere.

She struggles with her handkerchief with one hand, pulling it from her neck and sacrificing its limited ability to stop the bliss to tie it around her wound instead. The blood soaks the fabric immediately, but it’s the best she can do, and it doesn’t matter in the long term.

Nothing does except stopping Joseph.

She peeks around the corner of the pallet to see Joey inching closer, and she makes the split-second decision not to shoot. When Joey pops up in her space, Mattie lashes out with the butt of her pistol instead, making sharp contact with Joey’s temple. She reels back, falling to the dirt, and blinks open her eyes when Mattie puts a hand on her cheek.

“Rookie? What the… what the _fuck?”_

“Yeah.” That’s an understatement. “You good?”

“Yeah, what the fuck -- are you shot?” Joey tries to grab Mattie’s injured arm, but Mattie pulls away just out of reach.

“Listen. I need your help.”

“Anything.”

Mattie smiles. “Whitehorse and Staci are in the bliss. We just need to snap them out of it. You in?”

Joey, to her credit, only takes a second to agree. 

“Let’s do it.”

They split up. Mattie sneaks up on Staci while Joey circles around behind Whitehorse, and Mattie can just see Joey hopping on Whitehorse’s back from where she’s hitting Staci over the back of the head with a broken plank.

Both men get up and agree to help, Staci looking at Mattie the exact same way he did when she pulled him out of Jacob’s bunker: full of adoration like she hung the sun.

She doesn’t tell him he’s the one who shot her.

She can’t make herself.

Joseph taunts them as they work, screaming unintelligibly at them as they move deeper into the compound. The wind keeps howling, and the bliss keeps sparking at the edges of her vision, but with so many people fighting at her side…

She doesn’t die.

She knocks over and then helps up Nick and Mary May, Tammy and Jerome, and she can see the crowd growing and growing as there are more people to help.

Maybe… maybe she _should_ have brought Sharky.

Even if he was turned, he could have fought on her side.

He’s going to be… pissed.

“Your pathetic mob cannot stand before the storm!”

She helps up Wheaty even as she scoffs at Joseph, trusting her friends to have her back as she turns her attention away from the cult leader. The last time she saw Wheaty he was raw and suffering, mourning Eli’s death (his _murder_ at her hands), but he smiles at her all the same as she touches his cheek and then helps him stand.

“Everything you’ve done… everything you’ve earned… everything you’ve fought for is for nothing!”

They chase his voice deeper into the compound, dodging flying debris and bullets alike. More of her friends join him, more of her friends fall under sharp strikes from those already rescued from Joseph’s control, more of her friends turn and fight Joseph alongsider her.

This is how she should have been fighting him all along.

This whole fucking time.

“You don’t know what you’re doing! Only I can save you!”

Mattie pulls Grace to her feet in time to see Grace roll her eyes at Joseph’s words, and Mattie could almost kiss her.

They’re almost done.

They’re almost _free._

“You have to believe me!”

Joseph is panicked. He’s trapped between them and the church, alone without his followers to back him up, and she has almost everyone who’s fought beside her all this time.

He’s alone and he’s outnumbered and he’s _panicking,_ and Mattie can’t wait to put a bullet between his goddamn eyes.

She turns, and he’s right there, mouth agape and blood on his chest, and she lashes out on blind instinct. Instead of shooting him between the eyes, she manages to punch him there, and he crumbles to the ground.

They watch as he crawls away, not even quite on his hands and knees, sobbing into the dirt.

“Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do.”

Mattie wants to scoff and snarl, _oh, are you fucking_ Jesus _now?_ but all she can do is follow him one step at a time, hands empty and shaking at her sides, as he tries to crawl away from her. She can tell her other deputies -- her _family_ \-- are at her side, and she draws what strength she can from them.

Joseph deserves this.

She was chosen to bring him down.

He fucking deserves it.

“And when the lamb opened the seventh seal…” He stops crawling, pushes himself up onto his knees, and turns to look at her with his hands raised. There’s blood pouring down his face, down his chest, bruises forming where he’s been hit, scrapes and grazes covering his torso. He looks like he’s been through hell, and it’s all Mattie can do to listen to the rest of his words. “...there was silence in Heaven, and the seven angels before God were given seven trumpets.” Birds take off from around them, even though the wind has died down. “And there were noises, thunderings, lightnings, and an earthquake.”

From far off, a siren sounds.

Whitehorse steps forward. “Joseph Seed, you’re under arrest.”

Joseph doesn’t react, smiling at Mattie instead, like he knows something she doesn’t. “...and I heard a great voice from the temple say to the angels, ‘go your ways and pour from the vials the wrath of God upon the earth.’”

Whitehorse cuffs Joseph and hauls him to his feet, but Joseph doesn’t care.

He doesn’t even react.

Goosebumps break out on Mattie’s skin again, despite the sweat from the fight.

Something’s happening.

Something… is happening.

Joseph smiles.

Joseph smiles, and the world explodes.

The light blinds her, and she turns away. When she turns back, a mushroom cloud, just like in the vision Faith showed her, grows behind Joseph’s back. He doesn’t look at it, but everyone else does, hands up to shade their eyes from the sight.

His smile grows.

He steps forward.

“It is finished, child.”

He begins to sing as everyone else begins to panic.

“Amazing grace… how sweet… the sound…”

The concussion of the blast nearly knocks her off her feet, makes her ears ring from the force of it. It blows Whitehorse’s hat clean off, and it disappears somewhere behind Mattie.

She can’t take her eyes off Joseph, still singing.

“We gotta go! To the truck! Move, move, move!”

She obeys Whitehorse, running, trying to figure out when the Voice will come back and tell her to do a better job.

What choice did she have?

What could she have done differently?

It told her to do better, and she did better!

Right?

Didn’t she?

She ends up in the driver’s seat, but she doesn’t know how, pressing the pedal to the mat as the tires spin out and they barely make it out of the compound. Joseph keeps singing. Staci screams and then starts to say a Hail Mary as though she would help when no one else has. Joey screams.

_Joseph_

_keeps_

_singing._

Dutch’s bunker is the closest, so she tries to go there, but…

Staci’s right.

They’re not gonna make it.

A tree lands on them, and everything goes black.

_Are you there?_

_Are you there?_

_Where are you?_

She opens her eyes and everything’s still on fire. The world is woozy, and she feels sick. What’s the rule about nuclear bombs? Was that one close enough to poison them all, or far enough away to be survivable?

How long does it take radiation poisoning to set in?

_“Attention. Attention. This is the emergency broadcast system. Take shelter immediately.”_

Her head aches. Her stomach is trying to claw its way out of her. Her shoulders are caught and her hands…

Her hands are tied together.

_“This is not a drill. Repeat. This is not a drill.”_

Joseph is standing with his back to her. Dutch… Dutch is on the floor, unmoving, in a pool of his own blood, a victim of his own willingness to help.

“You know what this means?” She looks back up, and Joseph is dragging a chair over to sit just in front of her, just out of reach of her kicking legs if she had the energy to move. “It means the politicians have been silenced. It means the corporations have been erased. It means the world has been cleansed by God’s righteous fire… But, most of all… it means I was right.”

He leans closer, and she spits in his face.

He doesn’t even react.

“The collapse has come. The world as we know it… is over. I waited so long… I waited so long for the prophecy that God whispered in my ear to be fulfilled. I prepared my family for this moment, and you took them from me.”

He leans forward again and wraps one hand around her throat. He squeezes. She bares her teeth. “I should kill you for what you’ve done, but you’re all I have left now. You’re my family. And when the world is ready to be born anew, we will step into the light.”

She can feel her heartbeat around his fingers, slowing as the world starts to turn a beautiful, restful black around the edges.

“I am your father… and you are my child. And together, we will march through Eden’s Gate.”

He lets go of her and sits back. Smug. Fucking smug.

She leans to the side and vomits.

It’s red, so red. 

Full of blood and sickness and the damnation that comes from making the wrong choice at the end of the world.

_Are you there?_

_Is it time?_

_Help me._

_Help me._

_Help_

_me_

_…_

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“Why me? Why me?”

She rages and she fights and still the Voice doesn’t answer her. She waits in the _red_ of the _black white black_ and she rages and she screams.

It’s not until she calms that she hears it, so still and small, just like she was always taught.

_Because now you know. Now you know what is coming, and you know how to stop it._

“I don’t know anything! I don’t know anything! I’m not the one to stop it! I can’t!”

There’s another long silence as she floats, the red around her calming to a white as she _breathes in and breathes out._

_One, two, three._

_One, two, three._

_From the beginning, now. Make a different choice._

She wants to ask what choice.

She wants to ask.

She can’t.

_Black._

_White._

_Red._

_Black._

_Start again._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Tears are streaming down her face, unbidden, unacknowledged. Joseph stands in front of her once more, still shirtless, but inside instead of out. His hands are outstretched to her, supplicating, his face free of blood or bruises, and behind him…

Behind him…

Jacob stands, his chin up, his eyes wild.

John touches his ear, the one she shot in the church, and he bares his teeth.

Faith presses her hands to her stomach where Mattie’s bullets tore through her.

Joseph just smiles.

Mattie looks to her left, where she remembers Burke standing in the church, and he’s there, mouth agape, one hand pressed to his throat. To her right, Whitehorse stands, staring back at her. He inhales and exhales slowly, still staring.

He remembers.

They all remember.

“Put down your guns,” Joseph says, pulling her attention back to him against her will. She never fucking wants to look at him again. “Take your friends. Walk away.”

This… this is the choice she didn’t take.

This is the choice she should have.

Stopping Joseph, stopping the end of the fucking world doesn’t start with arresting him here..

All the death… all the destruction can be stopped now.

It can be minimized.

They just need… help.

“God is watching us. And he will judge you on what you do in this moment.”

Yeah.

Yeah.

She knows.

She lived it.

Joseph… Joseph knows, too.

The Voice told him just as it told her.

He’s just had more time to accept it.

She nods at him, and he lowers his hands.

She looks at Whitehorse, and he nods too.

He knows.

He looks at Burke, then back at her, and then he heaves in a heavy breath. He looks so much older, suddenly, like the weeks that haven’t actually happened yet have aged him so far beyond his years.

“We’re leaving,” he says, and she nods.

Yeah.

They are.

Joseph lets them walk out. His brothers, Faith, let them walk out. The peggies let them walk out.

Joey’s waiting by the door, hand on her pistol, back against the wall, face pale and green all at once. She grabs Mattie’s hand, and Mattie holds it, tugging her along behind as she starts to walk as fast as she can without running.

“What the fuck happened, Rook?” Joey’s voice is quiet but high-pitched, panicked on the edge of hysterical. “Last thing I know I’m looking at the end of the world and now--”

“Shut up,” Mattie hisses. “Wait.”

Joey falls silent.

They climb in the helicopter, in their old seats, and Staci turns to look at Mattie too. His face is as pale as Joey’s, the scars from Jacob’s torture gone.

She pulls the headset on so she can speak through the mic. “Just go back to the station.”

He nods at her like she’s the one in charge, flips some switches, and takes off.

The ride is silent.

She closes her eyes and puts her face in her hands, curled in on herself as much as she can.

_Did I do the right thing?_

_Did I do it right?_

_Am I free?_

She waits for the Voice to answer.

The Voice is silent too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, pals. There's another chapter coming.


	16. Chapter 16

The official diagnosis, six weeks later, after the National Guard and the feds and the EPA and the fuckin’ news crews have come and gone, is _mass drug-induced hallucination._

That’s it.

That’s the whole reason.

Mattie knows there’s more to it, knows there was something special behind it all. She’s the only one who remembers so much, the only one who can clearly describe how it feels to drown or be strangled to death, the only one who spent so much time listening to the _black white black_ and the Voice.

She’s the only one who heard the voice except for Joseph, and he never fucking shuts up about it, even from the relative safety of his prison cell in Missoula, and so she’s never ever _ever_ going to fucking bring it up.

Not to Staci, who smiles and teases her with just a little less energy than before, acting like he doesn’t remember the details of what happened to him in Jacob’s compound, but affected by it all the same.

Not to Joey, who smiles less often, who still curses every time someone brings up a Seed, who says it’s a damn good thing the National Guard showed up when they did or she would’ve hunted John down herself.

Not to Whitehorse, who is the quietest of them, whose sole moment of lost temper was immediately on returning to the station when he grabbed Nancy by the arm and threw her out into the parking lot, who has started offering Mattie hugs and pats on the back when it looks like she needs them (basically all the time).

Certainly not to Burke, who left without sleeping the next day, who she hasn’t seen since.

And absolutely not to the state therapist who brought two big suitcases and moved into the Hot Springs Hotel, only to have to drive into Falls End every day because no one would go into the Henbane yet.

She’s not trying to get involuntarily committed.

If she’s going to be committed, it’ll be on her own terms, and only when she needs it.

And she doesn’t need it, not yet.

She’s seen as something of a hero around the county, receiving free drinks from Mary May and free food from everyone else. People stop her to say thank you, and Boomer always runs up to jump on her if he happens to be nearby with Rae Rae.

That slows down too, as the days pass and things go back to normal, and only the people most involved in her fight against the Seeds look like they’re thinking about her bleeding for them when they look at her.

She starts looking at property listings online.

It’s not like she’s ever going to get fired now.

It takes the full six weeks — two weeks of paid leave, four weeks of being back on the job — for Jude to show up at the station. He has coffees for everyone and a look of grim determination on his face.

Staci sends a furtive look at Whitehorse, who feigns disinterest, and then accepts the coffees with a quick peck on the lips, and then Mattie hands Joey five dollars because she thought it would take longer.

(Mattie wins the five dollars back from Staci later when he owes her for Mary Mary bringing Joey lunch.)

She takes to visiting Jerome after services on Sundays, not quite ready to start going to church again, but craving the kind of spiritual guidance he gives so easily without making her feel like she’s going to hell no matter what.

She visits the Ryes, takes them baby gifts, receives hugs from them both, listens to Kim complain about how she was technically pregnant an extra two months until the memories start to fade and then are erased by Carmina’s abrupt appearance into the world.

She visits Grace, visits Jess, drives up to look at the abandoned Veteran’s Center, with its inhabitants arrested and its weapons cache seized, and thinks if she burned it to the ground, no one would turn her in for it.

Every night she goes back to her apartment, every night she goes home and puts a little food out for the stray cat and thinks about taking one of the sleeping pills her therapist recommended and gets in bed without opening the bottle, every night she curls around her pillow and she cries.

If the bombs had fallen that night she was with Sharky, before she snuck out without saying goodbye, if they had fallen first thing that morning before the sun came up… she would still be with him. They’d be together, in his bunker, alone but together, probably high as fuck and burning through their condom supply.

The world would be over, but they would be happy.

It’s selfish.

It’s so selfish.

But she misses it.

She misses him.

The therapist makes it eight weeks in Hope County before she packs up and goes back to Missoula. She leaves a recommendation for a virtual office, and Mattie puts the card next to her unused pills, but she thinks she overhears Staci telling Jude he’s going to set up regular appointments.

She gets Joey’s tattoo artist’s information from her and starts to look at phoenix tattoos on Pinterest, the blank space of her left forearm mocking her without its tally marks.

Mattie makes it nine weeks before she breaks under the strain. She makes it through nine weeks of emptiness, of loneliness, of the crushing feeling of how any moment could be her last.

Is this how she lived before? Was she ever so aware of her own mortality, or did she go through life acting like she was fucking invincible until the fact of it was actually shoved in her face?

She wakes up with the sun on her day off. She showers. She shaves. She conditions and blow dries and styles. She puts on a dress and grabs a sweater.

And she drives to the Henbane, up the hill, and to Sharky’s trailer.

He’s standing outside when she parks her car, an unlit cigarette in his mouth and a bucket in one hand. He looks over at her from under the brim of his hat and dumps another handful of… something… on the ground, then holds the bucket in front of him with both arms wrapped around it.

“You said you wasn’t gonna arrest me for any of that shit I did!”

Mattie freezes in place, halfway across to him, and just stares.

He stares back.

“Does it _look_ like I’m on duty?” Her voice come out higher-pitched than she means it, incredulous and not sure if she should start laughing or not. “Does Joey ever show up like this to drag you to the station?” She kicks one foot out to the side to emphasize the skirt she’s wearing, and his gaze immediately drops to the bare expanse of legs he can see.

“Uhh--”

“What are you even doing right now? What is that?”

“Uhh.” He looks down into the bucket, movements a little slow like he doesn’t want to look away from her skin, then he stares like he forgot the question. When he looks back up, she can tell his eyebrows are drawn tight together. “Sawdust.”

“Sawdust?”

“For the gasoline spills? I’m tryna… clean the place up a bit?”

They stare at each other as silence falls again. It stretches until it’s uncomfortable, and then it snaps.

Mattie bursts into tears. Not little ones, not anything cute or delicate, but big, ugly sobs that wrack her whole body and make her start to curl in on herself as she starts to shake. Her voice rises in an involuntary wail that she tries to muffle with her hands, but she can’t quiet it any more than she can stop it.

The tears overwhelm her, and so does Sharky.

There’s a dull thump of the bucket hitting the ground and then he’s in her space a half second later, his arms around her and one hand cupping the back of her head to pull her close. She presses into him, head tucked under his chin, and grabs the soft material of his hoodie for dear life.

The sharp smell of kerosene lingering deep in the fabric makes her cry harder at first as half-foggy memories burst into full clarity in her mind.

Climbing into his lap to sleep in John’s ranch, high and bruised and happy.

Kissing him for the first time behind the Spread Eagle after he arranged a private place for her to relax after rescuing Joey.

Drinking with him up at the PIN-K0 radar station and resting against him as he joked with Hurk.

Falling into his arms after she escaped from Jacob, shoulder dislocated, starving and sick. Healing and growing stronger, tucked safe against him, under him.

Feeling happy and safe and loved and protected with him.

Feeling _home._

She doesn’t realize Sharky’s murmuring to her until her sobs have calmed into tiny gasping breaths and her tears have dried on the faded words of his hoodie, she doesn’t realize he’s whispering that it’s okay and he has her and she’s safe until after her body has already realized it.

She’s safe.

“You’re okay, shorty, I got you,” he says, voice barely audible with his face buried like it is in her hair. “Fuck, I missed you. Please stop crying.”

She lifts her chin so her nose is pressed against his throat. “I’m sorry.”

He draws in a shaky breath and holds her tighter until he exhales. “What for?”

“Waiting so long to come back home.”

His hands are shaking harder than she’s ever seen them as he pulls away enough to cup her face. He stares down at her, studying her, and she lets him just hold her like that even as he blinks his own tears out of his eyes.

“Dep, do you… are you saying you still… love me?” His voice is shaky and wet, those beautiful blue eyes red around the rims. It sounds like he’s forcing the question out, like part of him is trying to keep it inside where the answer can’t hurt him, but the bigger part of him is too goddamn hopeful to not ask.

She squeezes him tighter as she speaks, the words somehow hard to get out even after everything they’ve been through together, even after finding him in her arms once again. “Yeah, baby. I still love you.”

He squeezes her tighter, almost tight enough to hurt even though this time she doesn’t have any lingering injuries to make the pain sharp, but he doesn’t pull away to kiss her or to look down at her.

He’s not ready to let her go.

“Okay, but, like--” he pauses to take a deep breath, and Mattie braces herself for an emotional stream of consciousness from Sharky. “I know you know, ‘cause I told you before, and also ‘cause you’re a cop, but, like, I’m on probation, and I got this rap sheet that’s a mile long, and not all of it should be on there but I can’t really help that now, and I know the sheriff don’t like me, and I don’t want you to get in trouble at your job--”

She’s heard enough. She wiggles out of his grasp and grabs his face in both her hands. He cuts off mid-sentence and stares at her with his mouth still open like the rest of his thoughts will come out the second she takes her hands off his skin. 

“Sharky, babe, you don’t -- I don’t care about that. I knew all that, and I love you, and I’m here, and we’ll figure out how to work it out, okay?” He nods. His mouth closes. “I want to at least try. I couldn’t live with myself if we didn’t try.”

“Really?” His voice cracks, and Mattie’s self-restraint does too.

She pulls his face down to hers, and he goes willingly, leaning so far into her space that she finds herself leaning backwards, resting her weight in his arms. She throws her arms around his neck and holds on for dear life as his lips press to hers and his heart beats against her chest.

It feels just the same as she remembered. It’s warm and comforting, safe, and she can’t help but smile as his goatee scratches her chin. He still shivers when she tangles her fingers in his hair, and he still licks her lower lip after he nips it, and he still holds her as tight as he can.

Some things are new, different now that their circumstances have changed so much. He smells like his cheap shampoo instead of gasoline, and he tastes like cinnamon toothpaste instead of cigarettes or beer or coffee, and there’s no stench of bliss or lingering injuries or far-off gunfighting to ruin the moment.

It’s just like it was, but somehow… it’s better.

They break apart when their kisses begin to taste like salt, and Sharky wipes the tears from her cheeks, then he kisses her forehead.

“Oh, my god,” she breathes, eyes still squeezed shut. “I love you.”

He moves like he’s going to wrap her up in another hug, but he scoops her into his arms instead. She shrieks, considers lashing out, and then bursts into laughter instead.

He’s beaming at her when she wraps her arms around his neck for stability, then he starts carrying her up to his home.

“I love you, too, shorty. I’m glad you came back.”

He has to put her down on his porch to get the door to his trailer open, and she grabs his free hand as he does. It’s just like their first time together, when she held his hand to keep him from losing his nerve as they walked to the house he’d gotten ready for her, but this time, she’s just tugging him through to his bedroom as fast as possible.

He follows her, of course he does, laughing a little at her eagerness, and she winks at him over her shoulder.

He grabs for her as soon as they’re near the bed, wrapping his arms around her waist and letting one hand dip down to her ass to squeeze through the fabric. She smiles as she lets him pull her close, lifting up onto her toes so she can reach him better to accept his next kiss, this one a little harder than the one they shared outside, a little hungrier now that they’re definitely not going to be seen.

Why did she wait so long to come out here?

What was she trying to prove to herself?

Guilt creeps up on her, distracting her from the feel of his beard on her face and his tongue against hers, and then his hands pull her attention right back to him as they start to pull her skirt up so he can get his hands on her skin, still on her ass.

Sharky swallows the little noise of surprise she makes, moaning back at her as he squeezes and lifts and encourages her to lift one of her legs to wrap around his thigh.

“Oh, fuck, I missed you.” Sharky breaks their kiss because he can’t bear to be silent for another moment, and Mattie takes advantage of it by leaning closer and kissing the base of his throat. “Oh, my god. Do you know how many times I fuckin’ jerked it thinkin’ about you showing up here like you just did?”

She wiggles herself free of his grasp and pushes his chest so he sits down hard on his mattress. “That all you missed?”

She waits for his answer, trying to hide her smile, hands on her hips.

He blinks once, then grabs for her again, trying to pull her down into his lap. “No, fuck no, I missed everything about you.”

She kicks off her shoes and climbs onto him, hovering a little over his lap on her knees so she can tug at his hoodie to make him take it off.

“Like what?”

He pulls his hoodie off, and she rewards him by resting her weight on him. He bites his lower lip and groans; he’s already hard.

He buries his face in the crook of her neck, and speaks against her skin. “I missed you bossin’ me around all the time,” he says, and then leaves an open-mouthed kiss against her throat. “And how you always actually listened to me.” Another kiss, this time on the underside of her jaw. “And how you were always putting your cold fuckin’ hands in my shirt.”

She laughs and does just that, sliding her hands under the collar of his tank top to rest on the warm skin of his back. He shivers good-naturedly and noses her sweater to the side so he can find a good patch of skin under her collarbone to latch onto.

“I kinda missed always having hickeys,” she says, rocking just a little in his lap to tease them both, telling the truth even though she wouldn’t admit it to anyone else. She liked having the little reminders of Sharky when they were apart, the little bruises that showed she had someone who cared about her as much as she cared about him.

Sharky makes a little grumbling sound that sounds like he wants to talk, but he doesn’t release her skin as he focuses on sucking a mark that will last, and she laughs again, delighted. 

He finally releases her and admires his handwork before looking up to meet her gaze. “You always laughed a lot when we were foolin’ around, but not like, at me, you know? Just ‘cause you were havin’ fun. I missed that too.”

She moves her hands to cup his jaw, holding him still so she can memorize the expression in his warm blue eyes. “I love you so much.”

He beams at her. “I love you more.”

She kisses him again because she doesn’t know what else to say, doesn’t know how else to show him how she feels. 

The relationship they built while fighting the cult together was too strong to fade away like the physical pains and sharp-edged memories of the horrors. It feels now, wrapped up in each other, that they’ve never been apart and will never be apart again.

She drops her sweater to the floor and yanks off Sharky’s top, desperate to feel his skin against hers. He only lets her move enough to remove clothing and then grabs for her again, not willing to let her get very far away at all. 

He flips them, finally, when she starts trying to get at his belt, turning so that she’s flat on his mattress and he’s kneeling over her. He ignores her reaching hands and slides his hands up her legs, smooth for the first time he’s touched them, then back down, then up again all the way to where her panties rest on her hips.

“That’s ni— _oh, fuck.”_ He pauses with her panties half down her thighs, exposing how she’s shaved herself completely for him. She didn’t know if he’d prefer it or not, knows he absolutely doesn’t care if she’s completely hairy, but it felt good to take the time to follow her old routines. “Fuck, yeah, okay.”

He flips her skirt all the way up and leans down without any other words leaving his lips to cover her slit with his mouth.

He’s just as enthusiastic as she remembers, and she shrieks as his tongue presses into her. It’s wet and messy and eager and so _Sharky_ that she can’t do anything but hold on with her fingers tangled in his hair and her heels digging into his back. He groans against her, feasting on her, eyebrows drawn together as he focuses all his energy on giving her the most pleasure he can.

His beard burns her sensitive skin, wetness drips down the curve of her ass and onto the back of her dress, and Sharky’s fingers press little bruises into the flesh of her thighs as he holds her still. 

It’s so good, it’s too good, and it’s wonderful, and if this is how it’s going to be the rest of her life she might just die for good with his head between her legs.

What a fuckin’ way to go.

She wails as she comes, pulls Sharky’s hair and kicks his back by accident, and then she laughs a little hysterically when he tries to keep going like he did their first morning together.

“Stop, fuckin’ _Christ,_ Sharky. Holy shit.” He stops right when she says, sits back on his knees and beams down at her, proud of himself, face flushed and beard wet, stupid gold chain still around his neck because he never takes it off. “I _love_ that you love that so much, but if you want me to ride you again, you’re going to have to quit it.”

His mouth drops open a little as he sucks in a deep breath, the flush on his cheeks darkening dangerously, and then he’s twisting around in obedience to flop on the mattress next to her. He opens his belt and wiggles his jeans down over his hips as Mattie pushes herself to her feet so she can drop her dress with her sweater and grab a condom from the pile she remembers, and then she turns around to see him watching her with one hand tucked behind his head and the other slowly pumping his cock.

She watches him right back for a minute, taking in the red and orange ink on his forearm, the twisting of the muscles there making the flames look like they’re dancing, the burned skin on his shoulder and chest, the hair across his pecs and stomach, the little bit of tummy he sucks in when he sees her looking.

“This what you did waiting for me to come back?”

He nods at her, pumping himself a little harder as he keeps waiting. He doesn’t look back up at her face, apparently unable to drag his eyes away from her breasts, her stomach, her bare thighs still glistening when she takes a step forward.

“Here.” She tosses him the condom and climbs on the bed as he rolls it on, then crawls over him on all fours as he watches her with wide, fond eyes. “Ready, baby?”

“Fuck yeah,” Sharky says, voice a little too rough to be as bright as it usually is. He puts one hand on her ribs and holds himself steady with the other so she can sink down on to him, and he moans aloud as she does. He doesn’t look away from the sight, and she doesn’t look away from his face, and as soon as he’s hilted inside of her she’s leaning down to kiss him.

He tastes like her, and she licks it from his mouth as she starts to move on still-shaky legs, fucking him nice and slow so she can drag it out. He can’t stop touching her, running his hands over her thighs and hips, ribs and breasts, into her hair that’s so much softer than it was in the bliss for her access to proper conditioning treatments, across her neck and down her back to start the process over again.

The drag and slide inside of her is exquisite, beautiful, a feeling she’s missed these long weeks, and she can’t stop kissing him even when her face starts to burn. She fucks him a little harder when his groans grow louder, feels sweat beading along her hairline and dripping down her temple before Sharky kisses it away.

“Sharky, baby, you feel so good,” she says, cheek pressed against his, trembling as his fingers tighten on her hips and he thrusts up into her like he can’t help it anymore. “Gonna make me come again.”

His groan is deep in his chest, his next thrust a little harder into her, knocking off her balance so she falls against his chest with a high, breathy giggle. 

He wraps his arms around her and holds her against him, using his leverage to start really fucking into her. She giggles again and holds onto his shoulders, nuzzling against his cheek as she just relaxes her body and lets the pleasure grow inside her, listening to his deep groans.

She loves how loud he is when they’re in bed together, how willing he is to let her know how good she’s making him feel.

“Yeah, just like that, I love it, I love you, c’mon, baby…”

His hands tighten and she revels in it, in the bright spots of pain under the pleasure, and she presses her face against the scar on his shoulder and cries out, long and low, as she comes on his cock. 

He follows her over the edge immediately, like he was just waiting for her permission, his moan half muffled in her hair as he curls into her. She shivers and clenches around him, tight, pulling another low moan out of him, and she sits up a little and laughs because otherwise she might cry at just how goddamn happy she feels, finally, _finally,_ after everything.

Sharky beams up at her, eyes half-closed and sleepy looking, and tucks a loose curl behind her ear.

She kisses him, soft and slow, still smiling, and then moves to stretch out on her side next to him. She waits as he gets up to throw out the condom, then he comes back and gathers her into his arms.

He kisses her forehead. “Now what?”

She shrugs and nuzzles at the underside of his jaw. “We just take it one day at a time, I guess.”

He makes a sleepy, grumbly noise deep in his throat. “Mkay.” Trusting, loving, beautiful Sharky. “I love you.”

She presses herself as close to him as she can. “I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Joey and Staci owe Whitehorse $5 each.
> 
> [Come scream at me on Tumblr](HTTP://ma-sulevin.tumblr.com/).


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